GERTRUDE STEIN, CLASSIC MOVIES, PICASSO AND NO CARS

LEAVE THE PASSAGE TO COME UPON A PLACE WHERE CARS ARE ALMOST ABSENT

(RUE CHRISTINE)

             Passage Dauphine and corner rue Christine / rue des Grands Augustins  

At n° 5 is the apartment where the Gestapo came to arrest 

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas: Not finding them it made off with the silverware and rugs, leaving the "degenerate art."

"Matisse, Cezanne, Picasso, the Stein adventure"

Facing it is a theater for Hollywood classics:

Studios Christine 

   One of the small cinemas that make Paris the movie capital.

Picasso painted Guernica on the next street, which is almost as quiet:

At the corner on the river, a restaurant where 19th-century tycoons invited the most dazzling courtesans:

 

If you ask very politely during off-hours, 

an attendant may show you the private salons...

with mirrors that the ladies would scratch to make sure that the diamonds their admirers offered were real. A walled-off door is said to lead by underground passage to the Senate, to ensure that senators' trysts remain unknown. Couches remained until a generation ago.

Those private salons are still known for their personnel's discretion, which can be politically useful.

The almost empty street brings fashion shoots...

The exceptional shops are mostly gone:

Next is one that remains.

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Beloved dinky toys, collectors' items