VII. A COMMUNARD BASTION ERASED AND TRANSFORMED: THE OVERLOOKED 13TH DISTRICT

MENU: 7. A Communard bastion

IT BECAME FRANCE'S MOST INDUSTRIALIZED AREA BECAUSE IT WAS...

• In the east where prevailing winds blow pollution 
• Next to the river and a railroad
• An outskirt with inexpensive land

Adapted from a Google map

Once idyllic, raw capitalism made it the city's poorest. 

 Painting (detail) of an inn in the area toward 1820 (anonymous, at the Auberge Ethchegorry today) 

Paris, 4 place Pinel "The Ragmen"  by Eugène Atget  toward 1900 / for more photos from the National Library, zoom 

Poverty made it a Communard stronghold, industrialization a place of crime, misery and revolt.

In brief

• The fight for the hilltop

• An epicenter of misery

• A Third-World revolutionaries' training ground

• "A lost district at the city's edge"

• A walk through an outskirt that used to be chilling

*    *    *

 

Next,

V.II.

The fight for the hilltop