Canal to Belleville: The Paris Parisians Keep

Place de la République

Paris's vast pedestrian square, anchored by a nine-meter bronze Marianne, has been the city's gathering place for celebration and protest since 1883.

You're standing in the middle of Place de la République, and that bronze figure towering above you is Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic. She holds an olive branch in one hand and a tablet of human rights in the other. At her feet, bronze lions guard a plinth carved with the dates of the Revolution. This square was redesigned in 2013 to be a pedestrian island in the middle of the city, and Parisians treat it as their living room.

On any given evening you'll find skateboarders, families, and groups of friends sprawled on the stone benches. But the square is also the city's default gathering point for demonstrations. When something matters to Paris, this is where the crowd comes. The Canal Saint-Martin actually runs directly beneath you here, through a two-kilometer underground vault built under Baron Haussmann in the 1860s.

Turn away from the statue now and walk north up Boulevard de Magenta. In about five minutes you'll reach the water.

Écluses des Récollets

The double iron gates and cast-iron footbridges at the heart of the Canal Saint-Martin, where boats still rise and fall three meters with each lock cycle.

You're now at the Récollets locks, the beating heart of the Canal Saint-Martin. Look at the double iron gates and the dark water between them. A boat enters the chamber. The upstream gates close behind it.

The water drains down, sometimes three full meters, until it matches the lower level. Then the downstream gates swing open and the boat glides through. It's slow, quiet, and entirely mechanical, the same way it has worked since the canal opened in 1825. Napoleon commissioned this waterway to bring fresh drinking water into Paris and to move grain, wine, and timber through the city.

The footbridge beside you is one of five cast-iron passerelles that cross the canal. They're painted a deep green and they creak underfoot. On summer evenings the quays fill with people dangling their legs over the stone edge, wine bottles and baguettes within reach. When you're done watching the water, follow the quai north.

In about a hundred meters the famous facade appears on your right.

Hôtel du Nord

The modest blue-and-white facade at 102 Quai de Jemmapes, immortalized by Marcel Carné's 1938 film and saved from demolition by its own star.

This facade at 102 Quai de Jemmapes is the Hôtel du Nord. It was a real working-class hotel in the 1920s, run by a couple named Dabit. Their son Eugène turned its daily life into a novel, and in 1938 Marcel Carné turned the novel into a film. The movie was shot entirely in a studio.

The canal you saw on screen was a set, the hotel a replica. But the real facade became an icon anyway. Arletty, who played the prostitute Raymonde, delivered the line that still hangs over French cinema: 'Atmosphère, atmosphère. Est-ce que j'ai une gueule d'atmosphère?' The building was nearly demolished in the 1980s to make way for new construction.

Arletty herself, old and blind by then, led the campaign to save it. The facade and roofline were classified as historic monuments in 1989. Today it's a restaurant with a zinc bar and red velvet banquettes. The facade is all that remains of the original, but that's enough.

Keep walking north along the canal.