June 2018 ~ Invisible Paris

The Morrison Hotel Mystery

The death of Jim Morrison is not the only mystery in the Rue Beautreillis. On this street where the leader of The Doors spent the last few months of his life and where he (probably) died, another door stands curiously alone. But what is it?

The last bastion standing

Today only one significant element of the city’s 19th century fortifications remains standing. Where is the Bastion n°1 and what purpose does it serve today?

The World's Oldest Surviving Basketball Court

How did a game invented by the YMCA in America cross the Atlantic in the late 19th century, and why has this Paris court survived so long?

The Longest Street in Paris

An attempt to find the soul of the city's longest thoroughfare.

Belgium by the Seine

A trip to Elisabethville on the trace of old postcard locations leads me to abandoned beach resorts and experimental 1950s architecture.

Tuesday, 26 June 2018

Book review and interview: “Left Bank” by Agnès Poirier

The ancient heart of Paris gives its name to a recently published book by writer and journalist Agnès Poirier, but rather than the history, geography or architecture of the district, it is an extraordinary period in its life in the middle of the twentieth century, and more particularly on a cast of fascinating characters that take centre stage.

If the Left Bank of Paris had already (re)developed artistic and cultural relevance in the 1920s and 30s, it is the period between 1940 and 1950 that Poirier convincingly argues was the era when the rive gauche truly played a world-changing role. At the heart of the book – which she describes as being neither a work of fiction nor an academic analysis, but rather a “reconstruction, a collage of images, a kaleidoscope of destinies” – are two extremely magnetic poles; Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.