SITES OF THE REVOLUTION

THE ODÉON MÉTRO STAIRS LEAD TO THE STATUE OF  GEORGES DANTON, AN ORATOR WHO WAS CORRUPT AND INDOMITABLE

RATP

• When the Revolution faced defeat his cry,"Audacity, audacity and more audacity, and France will be saved!" inspired the unprecedented action that brought victory.

Wikipedia

• "Show my head to the people. It's worth it!" he told the executioner as he stepped up to the guillotine:

Execution of Danton (detail), engraving by Charles Barbant, 1882 / zoom

A story that enters legend

Danton died simply, royally. He looked with pity to the people on the left and right, and saying to the executioner with authority : « Show my head to the people. It's worth it."

The execution did show it, turning on the scaffold, showing it on the four sides.  

There was a moment of silence [...] no one breathed [...]  

Then came a confused cry from the relieved and satisfied royalists, simulating applause : "So lives the Republic!" 

And a cry sincere and desperate from the patriots, stuck at their heart: "They have decapitated France!"  

-- History of the French Revolution by Jules Michelet, 1847 (ed.1971) pp. 570-571

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Cross the territory between the métro and this portal on the boulevard's other side, which his 11-room residence covered...   

                             Pamela Spurdon

• ...to find yourself in the ditch in front of the rampart:

Pamela Spurdon

 Cours de Commerce Saint-André

• Proceed past the workshop where the first guillotine was made...

• ...next to the home of the ferocious journalist Jean-Paul Marat, precursor of Goebbels and demagoguery now: 

 

"He abstained from abstract theories, unintelligible to the people [...]. One is surprised that the uniform violence, the same, always the same, that makes reading Marat so tiring [...]. Always the same refrain: death. No change beyond the heads to chop, 600 heads, 10 000 heads, 20, 000 heads ; he went, if I remember correctly, as far as 270,000 heads."

-- Michelet, pp. 147-148

The death of Marat by David, 1793 / zoom

         The painting made his assassination one of history's most famous.

Death of Marat, « History of the French Revolution" by Jules Michelet, 1847, ed. 1971, p. 500

...the girl seemed of old Norman stock, not flaunting her beauty, a green ribbon holding back her superb hair, under a bonnet...

"Charlotte... pulled out the knife and plunged it up the the hilt in Marat's heart."

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Back to the present: establishments to skip or appreciate

• A restaurant that touts its having been a meeting-place for the 18th-century philosophers, but the spectacular decor is fake, the service indifferent and the cuisine bland 

Zoom (first photo of the series)

Le Procope     

To the left of the entrance

Commercializing the past

• The site where Marat published his paper 
  is now a place for gourmet specialties from southern France. I overheard enthusiastic comments after a tasting.

Maison Brémond 1830

On the other side of the passage

"Marat's press was located here."

-- Sandrine Gaida, who heads the shop

• Many restaurants reheat and decorate dishes that are industrially-made, but here one can one watch classic, affordable French cuisine being prepared in the owner's presence:

Cèpes et figues

59-61 rue du Commerce Saint-André

Just before the exit

The owner looks out on the passage.

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Next,

A trace of the past and a sign of the future