OVERVIEW - CultureShock! A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette - page 30

life. Starting near Châtelet and moving east, gay nightspots
and restaurants contribute to the area's eclectic 24-hour
atmosphere. The bookshop, Les Mots à la Bouche, in rue
Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie is a central information point
for this increasingly open and accepted community.
All in all, the part of the Marais that stretches west from
Place de la Bastille to rue des Archives is a fun and somewhat
affordable area in which to live. Comfortable apartments can
be found in a range of prices, but parking in the crowded
streets is scarce. Another residential area is the small
quartier below rue Saint-Antoine. Buildings of homogeneous
architecture line its sides, most of which are well maintained.
There are just a few museums, some antique shops and
the remnants of the medieval city wall that draw visitors.
Convenient shopping for both areas stretches along the rue
de Rivoli, where it takes over from rue Saint-Antoine.
The 3 e arrondissement begins above the fashionable rue
des Francs-Bourgeois, once the northern perimeter of the
city walls, although here it is indistinguishable from the 4 e .
On lovely rue Payenne, the Museum of the History of Paris
was, in the 17th century, the hôtel particulier of the literary
Marquise de Sévigné. This area declined when the nobles
moved on, melding in dilapidated spirit with the quartier
farther north, toward what is now the rather gritty Place de
la République.
This northeastern corner (known as Temple) is where the
Knights Templar in the 12th century settled after their return
from the Crusades. Their Enclos du Temple was a powerful,
fortified city containing a palace, a church and commerce,
and it provided safety for workers and artisans within its
walls. It is all long gone, even the tower in which Louis XVI
was kept prisoner until his execution in 1793. When it was
finally torn down by Napoléon, all that remained were the
workers and tradesmen, and the area took on a rather shabby
character, which it still has today.
It was precisely the inexpensive aspects of this sector that
drew its present population. The post-World War I influx of
Asians into the 3 e constituted the first Chinese community
in Paris, and there is still an Asian presence around rues