PLACE VENDÔME AND THE OCCUPATION

ON LEAVING THE OPÉRA, TAKE RUE DE LA PAIX TO PLACE VENDÔME AND NOTICE THE LUXURY ESTABLISHMENTS... 

PHOTO CARTIER

...and on the place itself, the world-known jewelers:

Place Vendôme

 

Jean Beraud, who painted upper-class Paris at the turn of the 19th century, showed the entrance to the couturière Paquin and so the route toward place Vendôme, three times:

zoom

Zoom

• They move there from Palais-Royal when steamships encourage the tourism of the wealthy (from about 1880).

• So that is where the great hotels spring up, starting with the Hôtel Ritz on the place itself (in 1898).

New Year's Eve at the Hotel Ritz in 1930, "The Ritz of Paris" by Stephen Watts (ed. Bodley Head) 1964

# # #

During the Occupation, those hotels are where the German officers settle:*

* But not the Gestapo, which stays at the Lutétia across the river: Noble officers and lower-middle-class police do not mix. 

Lunch menu, 

four days after occupying Paris

It shows that the officers' pride in speaking French. (The writer does not know the French word for grapefruit, so says "grap fruit.")

Rommel, Commander of the forces in Normandy

Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda and a French collaborator. Notice the body language. 

Goering, next after Hitler

"We must assume our past," 

said Manager Claude Roulet

 when he let me use these photos

 from the hotel archives.

*    *    *

Next,

How Paris didn't burn