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museum and entertainment complex. It begins alongside
Canal Saint-Denis and straddles the Canal de l'Ourcq that cuts
across the top of the area and ends at the impressive Bassin
de la Villette. In the day, families come for the museum,
children's programmes, themed gardens, promenades and
bicycle rides along the path. In the evening, entertainment
takes over and all of Paris comes. As interesting as this all
is, it is currently not much of a residential district, although
it's on its way as old warehouses are being converted into
studios and apartments. Morever, when Baron Haussmann's
refurbishing of Paris' central slums sent many lower-class
Parisians migrating to Belleville, cottages went up willy-nilly
on small, hastily carved roads. These are the spruced-up,
charming culs-de-sac,
impasses
, and villas of today—a large
district that remains mixed in population, atmosphere
and price.
The
quartier
is most agreeable from Buttes Chaumont to
Place de Rhin-et-Danube, benefitting from its proximity to
the beautiful hilly Parc des Buttes Chaumont. How amazing
that in forcing the poor to these already overcrowded areas,
Baron Haussmann created one of the city's loveliest vantage
points! Around the park's perimeter are the broad residential
rue Manin and rue Botzaris. Off rue Mouzaïa and rue du
Géneral Brunet remain the villas of private houses, coveted
places to live in, as are some parts of rue de Belleville, still
like the high street of a small town. But these and other nooks
strewn across the southern part of the
arrondissement
are
interspersed with others of dilapidated housing and faceless
high-rises designed to replace them, especially around Place
des Fêtes, once the village square.
It should be no surprise that this area drew a population
looking for work and cheap housing. Immigrants came,
some legal, some not: Eastern European Jews came seeking
refuge, first from pogroms, then from the Nazis. Then came
Greeks, Armenians and Turks, and most recently Asians,
Arabs and Africans—again, some with legal papers, others
without—bringing a tangible instability and some anger
(sometimes explosive) to the area, as the French endlessly
debate how to handle the large immigrant influx and its high
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