We arrived in the 20th arrondissement of Paris today, and we spent a whole day wandering here. It’s a colorful, evolving, interesting, delicious, and diverse neighborhood.
There are immigrants here from all over the world, mostly from African countries. There are people from the Arab world and Asia, and there are also French families who couldn’t keep up with the soaring rents at the heart of Paris and moved out to the neighborhoods around the city center.
You can see Indian women in saris, Muslim women wearing veils, Africans with dreadlocks, kids with golden hair, and elegant French intellectuals with thin, gilded glasses.
These immigrants brought with them distant cultures, new languages, and ethnic food. There are Asian restaurants, North African restaurants, Arab restaurants, and also plenty of French bistros, wine bars, and cafés opened by young people who kick against convention.
The dominant language of the neighborhood is street art. Interesting, defiant, colorful, captivating, and sweeping. It’s how the artists who live here push back against the establishment in general, and the art establishment in particular. Here, they set the tone. Graffiti.
This neighborhood is also known for the fact that Édith Piaf was born here, and this is where she began her journey as a chanteuse, carrying on her back a hard life and a string of tragedies, yet still breaking through to the world and becoming an icon.
The bourgeois French who live in the old, traditional heart of the city don’t come here. To them, it’s a dirty neighborhood, full of immigrants and far from everything they love around them. For me, it’s exactly the opposite: I love coming to the hard core and seeing up close how people live here:
No masks.
No social makeup.
No accessory to hide the authenticity underneath.
People as they are.
A neighborhood as it is.
The neighborhood itself is built on hills, so there are ups and downs, sometimes steep ones. We do a lot of walking, but we use public transportation too when needed. Walking is the most fun, and the more of it, the better.
The Walking Route Through the 20th Arrondissement
The walking route through the 20th arrondissement is about 7 km long, so I recommend bringing comfortable shoes.
Instead of a map: under the heading of each stop, you’ll find its address, and every address is a link. Click it, and the spot opens right away in Google Maps.
Marché aux Puces de Montreuil
Metro: Porte de Montreuil
avenue du Professeur-André-Lemierre
A big, chaotic market that usually runs on weekends. Today is Sunday. You can find just about everything here, but I’m here for the immigrant food stalls, mostly Tunisian.
I push into line and reach out with eager hands for a hot, fried fricassé. The roll comes straight out of the hot oil, not greasy at all, stuffed with tuna, a hard-boiled egg, pickled lemon, and plenty of harissa, and I nearly faint. So good. Then I push into another line for spinge, also fried, huge, hot, and coated in a thousand grains of white sugar.
Now I’m ready to leave.
Our next stop: Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Père Lachaise
16 rue du Repos (the main entrance to the cemetery)
Père Lachaise is a cemetery that doubles as an outdoor museum, and it’s one of the most beautiful and famous cemeteries in the world.
It’s a huge, green, lavish plot filled with the graves of famous people, or at least those who could afford to build what look like small estates or tiny palaces.
Writers like Balzac, musicians like Jim Morrison, and composers like Chopin and Bizet are buried here. I’m here mainly for two graves:
Édith Piaf, whom I’m crazy about, along with her chansons, and Oscar Wilde, for his bittersweet humor, his hard life, and his genius with words and nuance.
The Market Next to Père Lachaise
Marché Pyrénées, rue des Pyrénées
From Père Lachaise, we head out to Rue des Pyrénées, right across from the cemetery, straight to the market, which runs twice a week. I’m crazy about markets, and it doesn’t matter at all whether I actually need anything there.
Just wandering among the stalls, the colors, the sounds, and the smells fills me with joy and satisfaction.
I take pictures, ask questions, get curious, taste things, and experience it all up close.
At the market, we stock up on fruit and load it into our backpack, which is always strapped to my back.
From the Ramus bus stop near the market, we take a bus toward Rue de Belleville, where we’ll start the real part of the tour inside the neighborhood. It’s not a route for the faint of heart, it’s steep and tough, and we still have a long day ahead of us. We’ve arrived.
Jourdain station is our stop.
A Chocolate Dream: Demoncy Vergne
Pâtisserie de l’Église, 10 rue du Jourdain
Demoncy Vergne is a pâtisserie whose chef has won important awards, mainly for his mille-feuille.
It’s a gorgeous pâtisserie with cakes, macarons, stunning chocolates, cute little sandwiches, and the whole place is beautifully designed.
We get a crunchy mille-feuille with divine cream, a small, refreshing apricot pie, and we can’t resist a stunning chocolate creation, even though it breaks our hearts to destroy it with a spoon. But life is short. Delicious beyond words.
Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Belleville
Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Belleville, 139 rue de Belleville
Next to Demoncy is the local church, beautiful and neo-Gothic and lit up, and at that very moment, as we sip espresso, a young, beautiful couple exchange vows nearby, accompanied by a procession of bridesmaids all dressed in peach pink.
The Flea Market in Belleville
From Demoncy, we walk down Rue de Belleville, and on the left side of the street there’s a street market spread out on the ground, on stalls, on makeshift tables, and it has everything: old furniture and dishes, picture frames, rugs, cute shoes, incomplete sets, copper pots, and random objects scattered on the ground, just as they should be in a real flea market.
I love flea markets, and this one in Belleville still feels authentic, even though it’s in a city saturated with markets that, for a while now, haven’t exactly been cheap.
The House Where Édith Piaf Was Born (Or Maybe Not)
We wind our way down the street, which slopes downward, and arrive at number 72, where we stop and look at a small plaque announcing: Édith Piaf was born here (Francophile’s note: this is apparently an urban legend, and Édith Piaf was not born on the sidewalks of Paris, but in a hospital in the 20th arrondissement). In no time, we’re turning right onto Rue Jouye-Rouve, the street where the graffiti celebrations of this fascinating neighborhood begin.
The whole street is decorated with graffiti, and turning left onto Rue Lesage, at the intersection of the two, there’s an amazing piece of graffiti of two women on a bookshop. It continues like this all the way to Rue Tourtille, a few minutes’ walk away. Every so often, interesting, colorful figures appear, blending naturally into the neighborhood’s scenery and only amplifying its color and the experience of it.
The Bar Where Édith Piaf Sang
Aux Folies, 8 rue de Belleville
At the corner of Rue Dénoyez and Belleville stands the old bar where Édith Piaf first began singing. It was recently renovated but still carries the same name it always has. A piece of history. We stop and look at it, and I raise an imaginary glass to the life of a small, fragile little bird who only wanted to sing and to be happy.
The entire length of the small Rue Dénoyez, all the way down, is also covered in dazzling graffiti, and we walk down it all the way to the corner, where we duck into a special, wonderful café.
Le Barbouquin
Le Barbouquin, 1 rue Dénoyez
It’s a magical café with character. On the old wooden floor are scattered colorful wool rugs, the café’s walls are packed with bookshelves, old lamps throw soft light, there are comfortable sofas and armchairs just made for stretching out, and charming vintage dishware everywhere. The food here isn’t a big menu, mostly vegetarian, but the music and atmosphere are intoxicating.
Here we sprawl out on comfortable armchairs, order a ginger and honey drink, and rest after our wonderful walk. Nobody here is in a rush to go anywhere. Neither are we. We still have the rest of the day ahead of us.
After soaking up the charming atmosphere of the place, the wonderful music, and the interesting characters coming and going, we start to feel hungry. We leave the café and turn right, and we’re already on the wide boulevards of Belleville, which, unsurprisingly, is called Boulevard de Belleville.
Worth knowing: a market runs on Boulevard de Belleville twice a week (not on Sundays), and it’s a colorful, interesting market. Naturally, most of the people behind the stalls are immigrants, but the steady stream of shoppers includes white French people from the city center, locals of every color and kind, and even Jewish families who live in the neighborhood. With a kippah on their heads!
It’s a moving, lively market, full of life, color, and cultures.
Vietnam in Belleville
Dong Huong, 14 rue Louis-Bonnet
We cross the Boulevard de Belleville and turn onto Rue Louis-Bonnet, where there’s a small, incredibly tasty Vietnamese restaurant nearby.
We’re crazy about food from the Far East, and Thailand and Vietnam are our favorites.
The Beautiful, Elevated Parc de Belleville
Parc de Belleville, 47 rue des Couronnes
From the restaurant, we head back and cross the Boulevard de Belleville onto Rue Rampeneau, which takes us all the way up to one of the entrances to Parc de Belleville.
The park itself is gorgeous and green. There are vines and trees, and garden plots where children grow crops. The terraces the park is built on, and the staircases, give it a unique look. Along the way, we stop to rest on one of the park benches and have a small picnic.
It’s lovely and peaceful here, and on a sunny day like this, you can see French people stretched out on the grass taking “sun baths,” a common sight in Paris parks on pleasant summer days.
Charming Rue de la Mare
After enjoying the panoramic views from up in the park, where you can see all the way to the Eiffel Tower, the Tour Montparnasse, and the winding river, we go down the park’s green, covered terraces and turn left, winding our way into a charming street, Rue de la Mare, lined with small galleries and artists, most of which are closed on Sundays, but the street itself, and the little square at its center, is full of charm. It also leads us to our next stop.
From the square on the street, we climb the neighborhood’s famous staircase, Rue de la Cascade, which takes us back up to Rue des Pyrénées.
We turn right, then left onto Rue Boyer, to number 19, where there’s a grand institution of the French labor union federation, still known for its power to this day.
La Bellevilloise
La Bellevilloise, 19-21 rue Boyer
There’s a lot of history here. Founded in 1877, it was the first workers’ cooperative in Paris.
A cooperative that only grew stronger over the years, and today, French trade unions are among the strongest organizations in France, with their word often carrying real weight.
The place is charming and spacious, with sports activities, and right next to it there’s a café-restaurant, where we settle in as the cool evening air sets in, a beer in front of us and a wonderful view of the setting sun.
Life is good.
If you’d like an extended route through the 20th arrondissement, feel free to check out this article.
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