Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Fifteenth Arrondissement (15
e
)
The largest
arrondissement
with the highest population in
Paris, the 15th
arrondissement
is a comfortable middle-class
community. Located southwest, it stretches north to the
subdued 7
e
, east to Montparnasse and south to the
périphérique
.
Until recently the province of chemical factories, metallurgies
and gasworks, the 15
e
has few tourist attractions, save perhaps
for some offbeat museums and the lovely, futuristic Parc
André Citroën. It is the locals who dominate: young Parisian
families, middle-level professionals and retired persons,
many of whom come for the reasonable rents and the family
atmosphere. Prices here are moderate in comparison to other
areas on the Left Bank or in the 16
e
, just across the Seine.
Apartment blocks built in the 1960s and 1970s dominate
in an area along the river called Front de Seine, with an
elevated, landscaped walkway connecting the buildings.
Here children play in the evenings while their parents chat
on benches close by. On rue Linois is the multi-level Centre
Beaugrenelle, a shopping mall, but just a few streets away,
at Place Saint-Charles, modernity gives way to graceful Belle
Epoque buildings and various services catering to a middle-
class French population.
Further down the river, the 14-hectare Parc André
Citroën, a beautifully designed green space built with much
imagination on the site of a former automobile plant, adds
to the revitalisation of the area. Citroën-Cévennes is a
residential
quartier
surrounding the revamped rue Balard,
with both modern housing and refurbished old apartments.
This revitalisation will only increase now that the large,
ultramodern Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou is open
after years of construction.
Elsewhere, little communities hold their own. The
commercial rue du Commerce, with its shuttered houses,
barely looks any different from how it might have been 50
years ago, especially around Place Etienne-Pernet. Here are
inexpensive restaurants, neighbourhood shops and the Place
du Commerce, a pleasant, leafy square. Past rue Lecourbe, the
streets around rue de Vaugirard and rue de la Convention are
popular for their comfortable, middle-class ambiance.
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