NOBLES TAKE OVER

THE SINISTER BACKWATER BECOMES UPSCALE WHEN NOBLES SETTLE NEAR "LES BOULEVARDS" TO REACH VERSAILLES MORE EASILY*

*The southwestern 7th district, where antiquarians now cluster and that is nearer Versailles, was already occupied.

Those vast arteries on the city's edge allow avoiding the center's traffic jams and makes Versailles only three hours away by coach, one hour on horseback. 

     Crowds of Paris at pont Neuf, engraving by Nicolas Guerard, toward 1700 / zoom

Yellow arrows show location, red ones show a walk.

Eliminating the Court of Miracles and the criminals near the wall announces the court's move to Versailles.

 

*     *

Examples of the new population:

• The Sisters of Saint-Chaumont settle on rue Saint-Denis in 1683. One can still glimpse their former establishment behind the buildings: It covers a full block, across rue Saint-Denis from rue Beauregard, where La Voisin had lived.

The convent lies behind the buildings, from this corner to the Saint-Denis gate.

Noblewomen would retire to convents like this one, to leave the concerns of the world and prepare salvation. 

Corner next to the Saint-Denis gate

• In the decades before the Revolution the father of portraitist Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun lived on rue de Cléry, just below rue Beauregard. She did too as an adult, and a woman she did not like held a salon there.

-- The Libertines; Pleasure and Liberty at the Time of Enlightenment  by Olivier Blanc, 1997

 

One of her 20 portraits of Marie-Antoinette and self-portrait / zoom 

Those nobles are at the origin of the Boulevard's 

19th-century fame for elegance,

and of the neighborhood west of the Saint-Denis gate.

*    *    *

Next,

The garment district, heir of the Boulevards and nobles