Giuseppe Belvedere (1945-2022) was not part of any noble family. He was not a duke or a prince. And yet he was an important part of the landscape and the social fabric of the 4th arrondissement for the last 40 years, ever since he emigrated to Paris from Calabria in southern Italy.
Over the years he became a familiar figure in the area, a real attraction in his own right. Photographers and tourists photographed him at work every day, painters painted him, a talented sculptor carved a stone statue of him, filmmakers wrote scripts about his life story, journalists covered his movements, a Facebook group was set up in his name, and social media is full of his pictures.
He had thousands of admirers. Twenty thousand people signed a petition calling for help for him. On the other side, plenty of people who hated him harassed him, beat him in the street, destroyed his meager belongings, and filed complaints against him again and again. The police and the city authorities went after him and tried to stop him from carrying out his life’s work: feeding hundreds of pigeons on the plaza of the Centre Pompidou.
One man’s life’s work comes to an end
On January 11, 2022, Giuseppe carried out his mission for the last time. The next day, on a particularly cold winter night, he was found dead in his old white van, which had been donated by his supporters and which served as his home. The “angel of the pigeons” was 76 when he died.
Since 2005 he had been seen every day dragging, with his last remaining strength, two battered shopping carts full of bird food. Several times a day, in the cold, in the rain, in the heat, Giuseppe kept helping his small, hungry wards. Nothing could stop him from carrying out his mission: not the weather, and not human cruelty.
The pigeons would recognize him from a distance. They waited for him every day at the appointed hour, with what looked like a visible smile on their faces. At times it seemed as if some of them broke into an excited little dance for him. Between him and them there was something like a mutual pact: he lived for them, and they survived because of him.
Giuseppe had once worked as an accountant, lived an ordinary, normal life, and paid his taxes like everyone else, until the day he saw a protest outside his home, where a group of people was condemning a plan to exterminate the city’s birds. The cause touched him deeply. He joined the group’s active work.
The next morning he went out for the first time in his life to feed the birds of the neighborhood. It was the first step that led him to devote his entire life to the birds. His feeding operation grew and grew. Before long, hundreds of pigeons were gathering every day on the plaza in front of the Centre Pompidou, right in the heart of the City of Light.
The tragic story of Giuseppe Belvedere, known as “Mr. Pigeon”
Giuseppe fed the pigeons with endless devotion, showing enormous dedication to his goal. At the same time, warning letters and fines from the district’s city hall began arriving at his home, claiming his activity was illegal.
A lack of compassion and considerable cruelty on the part of the city authorities led to his eviction from the subsidized apartment he was entitled to. In 2011 he was thrown out onto the street. The city, unable to stop his activity, took away his personal dignity instead. What was revealed here was a different side of Paris: an ugly, inhumane Paris.
Giuseppe was left with a small pension. Despite his age, he moved into his car and turned it into both his home and a shelter for injured pigeons. Almost his entire pension went toward buying grain to feed the pigeons and medicine and treatment for sick and wounded birds.
Some of the local residents turned out to be merciless and aggressive toward him as well. His hobby was received very badly by some residents of the Beaubourg district, behind the Centre Pompidou, where he carried out his work. They did not hesitate to show their hostility toward the old man and his habits.
It was said that people with less than good intentions mixed rat poison into the seeds he scattered. According to them, his activity was a public health hazard, since pigeons spread dirt and disease. His rusty van was vandalized again and again, its tires were slashed, and he was the victim of repeated verbal and physical attacks.
Once, unknown assailants tried to set his van on fire while he was inside it. He escaped by a miracle. Another time, the city of Paris towed away his van, along with all his belongings, his medicine, and 23 injured pigeons that were in his care at the time.
He was not always pleasant. At times he showed verbal aggression toward curious onlookers trying to push into his narrow world, getting too close to the hundreds of pigeons and frightening them. Because of his sharp words toward people who bothered him, the authorities tried to have him committed to a psychiatric institution. They almost succeeded.
Twice he was taken by force to a psychiatric hospital, but released quickly. You could say many things about him, but he was not crazy. Twice he was arrested, but released after 24 hours. He and his pigeons had at least one thing in common: they were free.
The years were not kind to Giuseppe. Walking became harder and harder for him, and standing up straight was no longer possible at all. And yet, when the time came for the daily mission that mattered to him more than anything, his strength would surprisingly return to him, just long enough to finish his shift.
The pigeons were a substitute family for him. He felt more comfortable in their company than in the company of people. He trusted them, and he communicated with them well. For the pigeons, his arrival for his shift was something like a daily “second coming.”
I photographed him every year starting in 2008. I called the photos of him that I displayed in several exhibitions “The Restaurant Manager,” which is how he was seen in the eyes of the pigeons he tirelessly cared for.
A few years ago I stood and listened to a conversation he had with a passerby. He may have lived on the margins of society, but he turned out to be a sensitive, wise, and intelligent man. He said roughly this:
Politicians cannot decide how I should live. On the contrary, they must listen to my needs and address them. A civilized, properly run country should protect its retirees. Not throw them out onto the street. All I asked for was the right to go on living my life. It’s true that pigeons make a mess, but cars pollute the city far more.
Giuseppe never did a single wrong thing in his life. He did not steal, he did not hurt anyone, he did not even drink. His only “crime” was that he insisted on sticking to his life’s work no matter what. One of the main lessons from Giuseppe’s ongoing story is this: even when you have nothing in life, you can still give something to others.
He was one of the few homeless people who stayed on the street by choice. It is true that he was thrown out of his home in a scandalous and dubious way, but he was offered alternatives. Since they all meant moving far away from his “workplace,” he insisted on staying where he was and refused to save himself. He preferred to die rather than sacrifice his pigeons, because Paris without pigeons is not Paris.
It is not clear who will feed the pigeons now, how, or whether they will manage to survive. Will the city hall of the 4th arrondissement allow someone else to step into the shoes of this “madman on a mission” who gave his life for the pigeons? And will such a candidate even be found?
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