THE SINISTER BACKWATER BECOMES UPSCALE WHEN NOBLES SETTLE NEAR THE BOULEVARDS TO REACH VERSAILLES MORE EASILY*
*The southwestern 7th district, where antiquarians cluster now 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.
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Embarras de Paris vu du pont Neuf, gravure de 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.
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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.
- 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.
-- Les Libertines; Plaisir et Liberté au temps des Lumières by Olivier Blanc, 1997
Those nobles are at the origin of the Boulevard's
and of the neighborhood
west of the Saint-Denis gate.
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