Paris Travel Off the Beaten Path

We offer you a fascinating itinerary which matches the definition of Paris travel off the beaten path. It is not about well-known Paris museums and tourist attractions in Paris, but the itinerary that makes you feel the aura and ambience of the City of France. And you see the place from inside, as those who live in Paris.

Rue Mouffetard, somewhat out-of-the-way behind the Pantheon, Paris, is the backbone of a charming neighborhood known familiarly as “La Mouff’” by locals, and little frequented by tourists. It goes way back, having perhaps been a Celtic trail in the last centuries B.C., and is documented as a major early A.D. road leading from Lutetia (Roman Paris) to Lugdunum (today’s Lyons) and thence to the Eternal City (Rome) itself.

It starts just above Place de la Contrescarpe, “counterscarp” in English and referring to the outer wall of the moat that passed here on its way around the city wall built at the beginning of the 13th century by King Philip Augustus.

At this junction with rue Thouin stood the Porte Bordel, recalling (no, not off-duty soldiers’ frolic) the name of the man who owned the plot on which the Gate was built. To view an extant vestige of Philip’s impressive rampart, wander along to 12 rue Thouin.

Peering through the Bistro des Cigales’ street window (but why not go in and have a scrumptious meal? You will be pleasantly surprised by Famous French Food ), you can see that its back wall is… Philip’s rough-hewn masonry, eight centuries old!

After cup of coffee and snack we continue our Paris travel off the beaten path . Back to Place de la Contrescarpe, a pre-World War II haunt of Hemingway, who in fact anchored his “movable feast” just around the corner at 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine. The author and wife Hadley lived on the fourth floor.

Starting, now, along Paris street rue Mouffetard note the shop sign at N° 6, a butchery at least since the 18th century when the sign was affixed to it. The right-hand ox is original, the one to the left a 1970s replica. Until nearly the end of the 19th century, most Parisians were illiterate and shopkeepers signaled their wares with such graphic “advertisements,” several of which you’ll discover as you descend the Mouff’ slope.

Although not far from the heart of “new” Paris, there is still a rustic air about La Mouff’. Writer Paul Nizan noted that as late as 1926 it boasted some of the loudest-crowing cocks of Paris – great going in a country whose emblem is a rooster!

On the pedestrian lower half of the street there’s a daily open-air market, harking back to about 1350.

All along bustling rue Mouffetard there is a curious mix of low-market stores cheek by jowl with trendy shops and cozy cafes, Paris. A graffito one of the latter proclaims “Poetry: an extreme sport!”

In the 1930s, the predecessor of today’s N° 53 was in sorry shape and it was decided to restore it. On May 26 1938 a Spanish mason called Maures working on the site accidentally caused a wall to collapse. Inside it was what he took for medals. At home that evening he showed a handful to his wife. “You dunce!” (or words to that effect) she chided him, “Those aren’t medals – they’re coins, gold coins!” As honest as ham-handed, Maures went to the police. A total of 3,351 doubles louis were retrieved, along with the testament of an 18th century adviser to the king, who willed this fantastic fortune to his daughter. By the early 1950s, they had been distributed to the man’s 84 descendents. How did they find their way into that wall? And was mason Maures rewarded for his honesty? Mystery…

At N° 60, you come upon the Fontaine du Pot de Far (“Iron Pot Fountain”) built at the behest of Queen Marie de Medicis in 1624.

Nostalgic for her native Florence’s Palazzo Pitti and Boboli Gardens, Queen Marie de Medicis replicated them in the City of France with the Luxembourg Palace (today’s French Senate) and Gardens. To water the latter, nearby wells would have been insufficient, and then state-of-the-art technology couldn’t pump enough water up from the Seine. The Queen’s monk-engineers were thus dispatched to find abundant water and the means to bring it into the city.

Their conclusion? You can’t outdo what the Romans 14 centuries earlier: tap into sources near today’s Orly Airport (see Paris Airports page), and reconstruct their aqueduct. In addition to irrigating the Luxembourg Garden, the Queen made water available to the populace via several public fountains such as this one, rebuilt in the 18th century.

The gloomy building at N° 61 was once a convent, converted in the mid-1800s to its present-day function: a Republican Guard barracks.

At N° 69, At The Old Oak (another venerable sign) originally belonged to the nuns just up the road before the Revolution, which deconsecrated it and ultimately turned it into a… dance hall. An 1867 observer criticized what he called “the thugs of 14 and the thugesses of 12″ who pranced there.

Now, on your left at N° 99, you come to the Passage des Patriarches. You will look in vain for bloodstains on the pavement. Nevertheless in 1561, during the Wars of Religion, this was the site of some of the nastiest mutual throat-slitting between Catholics and Protestants.

Side Trip

Now our Paris travel of the beaten path leads you to the Passage des Patriarches and then to the rue des Patriarches, cross rue Monge and follow rue Daubenton to rue du Gril, on your right. Only 52 meters long, this is the shortest open thoroughfare in Paris. Continue, now, to rue Geoffroy St-Hilaire. At the corner, you come to the general public’s entrance to Paris’s oldest Mosque. Built between 1922 and 1926 in a Spanish-Moorish style, it is still an exotic sight in France’s very cosmopolitan capital.

In addition to housing a place of worship, a dispensary and a center of theological scholarship, the Mosque offers shopping in an atmosphere close to any North African soak, and a restaurant-cum-tearoom with authentically (and deliciously) exotic fare.

To digest, stroll back to rue Mouffetard the way you came.

Note the A la Bonne Source (“From the Good Spring”) shop sign at N° 122, two lads drawing buckets from a well. Rather than advertising water, however, it was probably intended to boast that whatever was sold here came from a good source.

At the bottom of rue Mouffetard, you come to a little square, perhaps the green of a village dating back to the 9th century A.D., and St. Médard church. Dating mostly from the 16th-18th centuries, it’s not much to look at for my money. But in the early 1700s it was the scene of some pretty crazy goings-on. A cult formed around the tomb and religious ideas of one Francois de Paris, buried here. A practicing masochist, he believed in purification and miracle working through suffering. His fanatic followers – known among other things as “convulsionists,” “jumpers,” “barkers” and “meow-ers” – practiced all sorts of torture and self-torture.

In 1732, after five years of such shenanigans and acting on royal order, a police lieutenant closed the sect down and tacked to the church door a rhymed notice saying:

De par le Roi, défense a Dieu
De faire miracle en ce lieu.
(By order of the King, God is forbidden to work miracles in this place).

At N° 134, facing the church, check out the wild painted facade.

The kicker concluding this stroll? The etymology of the name “Mouffetard.” There are a couple of explanations.

Just by the St. Médard church flows the River Bievre, from the Latin bibber (beaver) and so named for obvious reasons. From the Middle Ages until the Bievre was covered over early in the 20th century, its banks were crowded at this spot with tanners, dyers and other practitioners of malodorous trades, dumping their waste in its waters. The name may, then, stem from a now-forgotten word of old French, moffette, which relates in turn to the term in today’s Tuscan dialect of Italian moffa, simply meaning “rot.”

This is basically the end of this paris travel off the beaten path, but you can always continue your Paris tour by yourself. To ease your preparations we have some tips for you (see Paris Vacation Tips page).

So you’ve just strolled down… Stink Street!

by Arthur Gillette