Paris - Belleville and Ménilmontant

The most celebrated inhabitant of Belleville, the chanteuse Edith Piaf, is said to have been born on the steps of the dilapidated house at 72 rue de Belleville. The special atmosphere of eastern Paris, personified by the "sparrow of Paris" and Maurice Chevalier in the 30s, has long since gone, and the Belleville, Ménilmontant and Barbès quarters, like much else in Paris, are in process of change.

Belleville, like the neighboring districts of Charonne, Ménilmontant and Barbès, was originally a small village which began to be industrialized in the early 19th C. Between 1820 and 1860 the population of Belleville rose from 8,000 to 60,000. Around the turn of the century it was incorporated in Paris as the 20th arrondissement, which became the home of numbers of refugees, including many Jews from Central and East Europe. They have left their mark on the quarter, still visible in the area round Rues Ramponeau, Dénoyer and Lacroix, in which is the Synagogue. When in the 20th C many industrial undertakings moved to the outskirts of Paris on cost grounds the occupants of the old houses changed; often badly dilapidated, they are now occupied mainly by Asian immigrants and "Maghrébins", as the travailleurs immigrés from the former French colonies in North Africa are called. The city has launched a large-scale program for the rehabilitation and redevelopment of Belleville, Ménilmontant and Barbès. Many old houses have been pulled down and replaced by blocks of modern appartments. An example of successful renovation, with the preservation of historic old buildings, is the area round the church of Saint-Germain-de-Charonne. In Rue Saint-Blaise old houses rub shoulders with new buildings designed to fit in with their environment, and only a stone's throw away are ugly apartment blocks of the 60s. The difficulty about the renovation program, as always, is the unavoidable increase in rents which have been relatively low so far. It is only a question of time, therefore, before this working-class area becomes an expensive middle-class quarter. The present tenants will them be forced to move out into one of the dormitory suburbs in the banlieue, often in unattractive living conditions, which were so sharply delineated in the film by the Algerian director Mehdi Charef, "Tea in Archimedes' Harem"; and local civic initiatives and the efforts of the people themselves are likely to make little difference. So far, however, the district has managed to preserve its village-like charm and the atmosphere of the colorful weekly markets, the Norman cheese shops, the Breton fish-sellers and the Provençal vegetable dealers, with the addition of the exotic shops and restaurants of incomers from the French West Indies, black Africans and Arabs, the little theaters, the dance halls and the artists' studios.