Paris Guide
Eastern Paris
The Canal St-Martin, running from the Bastille in the south to the place de la Bataille de Stalingrad in the north, effectively marks the boundary between central and eastern Paris. The area east of the canal has traditionally been the home of the working classes, and during the Industrial Revolution in the mid-nineteenth century, the old villages of Belleville, Ménilmontant and Charonne were colonized by the French rural poor. These populations supplied the people-power for the insurrections of 1830, 1832, 1848 and 1851, and the short-lived Commune of 1871, which divided the city in two, with the centre and west battling to preserve the status quo against the oppressed and radical east. Indeed, for much of the nineteenth century, the establishment feared nothing more than the "descente de Belleville" – the descent from the heights of Belleville of the revolutionary mob. It was in order to contain this threat that so much of the Canal St-Martin, a natural line of defence, was covered over by Baron Haussmann in 1860.
Today only a few reminders of these turbulent times survive, such as the Mur des Fédérés in Père-Lachaise cemetery recording the deaths of 147 Communards, and a few streets bearing the names of popular leaders. Some of the old working-class character of the district lives on in places: narrow streets and artisans' houses survive in Belleville, Ménilmontant and off the Canal St-Martin. Much of the area, however, has undergone redevelopment over the last few decades. Crumbling, dank and insanitary houses were replaced by shelving-unit apartment blocks in the Sixties and Seventies, giving way in recent years to more imaginative and attractive constructions. The biggest development was the conversion of the old meat market area of La Villette in the 1980s into a futuristic science museum and park.