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 skipping the traffic of the center...
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Parisian Congestion as Seen from Pont Neuf, engraving by Nicolas Guerard, toward 1700 / zoom |
...and makes Versailles only three hours away by coach, one hour on horseback. A population the opposite of the beggars, thieves, poisoners and sorcerers settles there.
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| Plan of 1576 / zoom |
Yellow arrows show location, red ones show a walk.
Eliminating the Court of Miracles and the criminals sheltered near the wall announces the 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.
-- The Libertines; Pleasure and Liberty at the Time of the Enlightenment by Olivier Blanc, 1997 (in French)
Those nobles are at the origin of the Boulevard's
and of the neighborhood
east of the Saint-Denis gate.
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