Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [189]
In 1986, Mitterrand’s minister of culture hired Daniel Buren to create a three-thousand-square-meter sculpture of black and white columns in the courtyard of honor of the Palais Royal (at the south end of the gardens). The superposition of this highly contemporary work on such a traditional backdrop still generates controversy today. I don’t mind it, actually, and children love playing among the columns.
So why have I bored you with this history lesson? Because I feel it is essential, as you walk under the arcades lining the gardens, to have a sense of the turbulent history of the place. And because it’s probably the one place in Paris where you can get a sense of what that quintessential Paris experience—shopping—was like a couple of hundred years ago.
So let’s stroll under these arcades, beginning with the entrance at the southwest end of the gardens.
One of the first shops you’ll find is Au Duc de Chartres, which carries antique heraldry, medals, and coins. A very appropriate shop for the Palais Royal, don’t you think? Just because its contents don’t interest me very much doesn’t mean this shop isn’t heaven for fanatics of such things. I, for one, still enjoy peering through its windows and imagining the sort of people who are passionate about medals from bygone wars!
Perhaps instead of heraldry, you are fascinated by amber—that ancient tree sap metamorphosed into shimmeringly transparent golden yellow stone that sometimes contains insects or other fragments of past life trapped millennia ago in the sticky. La Maison de l’Ambre is a shop devoted exclusively to amber jewelry, with many pieces at affordable prices. So don’t hesitate—walk right in!
Not long after La Maison de l’Ambre, you’ll find the first of several shops on both sides of the garden belonging to Didier Ludot, Paris’s number one purveyor of vintage designer clothing, shoes, bags, and other accessories. This isn’t just any old secondhand store—believe me! If you’re looking for a Chanel suit from the thirties or forties, this is your store. Or visit Ludot’s shop, on the other side of the garden, dedicated uniquely to the “little black dress.” You’ll see examples of the genre from every decade.
All of the Palais Royal shops have a secretive air about them. First, they’re inside a garden that is almost completely sealed off from the bustling Paris outside. Second, they’re under the arcades, with big windows just made for peering through. But perhaps one shop carries this confidential theme a bit far: a sign in the curtained window just says “Très confidentiel” and lists a phone number. I haven’t called it.
Just beyond it is a charming shop called L’Escalier d’Argent—the Silver Staircase. Now, just the name of this shop is enough to enchant me. The Silver Staircase offers small antiques and curios, as well as vests for men—very unusual, colorful vests, I might add. Now this is my idea of the perfect Palais Royal shop.
I also passed a shop specializing in antique pipes, both restoration and sales. Now, of course I don’t smoke, but I can’t help but appreciate that such an unusual shop exists.
The north end of the Palais Royal rectangle contains some jewels, the best known of which is Le Grand Véfour (apparently there used to be a Petit Véfour as well). Who can resist a restaurant that goes back to the late 1700s? Where Colette and Jean Cocteau rubbed elbows, where Sartre smoked and held forth, and before them, Bonaparte and Joséphine? The restaurant has one of the most beautiful interiors of any restaurant in Paris, resplendent with Belle Époque mosaics and frescoes. However many stars Chef Guy Martin may or may not have, according to the whims of the Seigneurs Michelin at the moment, the restaurant is worth an evening simply to soak in the ambience.
Continue along the northern boundary of the garden and you’ll come to a narrow passage leading to the street outside, where you’ll find two of my favorite three shops of the Palais