WALK DOWN TO THE JUNCTION WHERE "LA DESCENTE" BEGAN
(BY RUE DE BELLEVILLE)
Adapted from a Google map
Traces of old Belleville: Edith Piaf and Marcel Arnault
Belleville of Long Ago (in French)
That she was born on the steps is a myth, but Piaf's parents did live in that house, she did sing in this street and she was so poor that she had to prostitute herself to bury her two-year old child.
From the 1920's to the 1970's, Armenians and Eastern European Jews made Belleville France's center for handmade shoes. Among the rare French cobblers was Michel Arnault, whose workshop was next to that house:
He told the biographer his story as he worked away, nails in his mouth. Too ill to go to school, he learned to read and write with clients in cafés. Then he read and pondered great philosophers and writers.
When during the Occupation
the police prepared to arrest Arnault's Jewish assistant...
a friend persuaded a French official to meet him. Things began badly, the official saying that the Gestapo had the dossier already. Arnault was so tense that he tore the petals away from a flower in a vase on the table, murmuring a Latin declension (rosa, rosa, rosam...). The official asked if he knew Latin, and in the affirmative tested him by reciting Caesar's commentaries in the original. The conversation continued in Latin, and the assistant was saved.
More on Arnault here.
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Another "Chinatown," which is newer and smaller than that of the 13th:
An Asian chorus at a Fête de la Musique
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On the way to the crossroad
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Jaber
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Graffiti
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