10th arrondissement

Highlights: Canal Saint-Martin · Porte Saint-Denis · Porte Saint-Martin · Château d'Eau · Faubourg-Saint-Denis · Gare du Nord · Saint-Vincent-de-Paul

Long a land of faubourgs, at the gates of the old capital, the 10th arrondissement was built outside the walls, to the rhythm of artisans, travellers and bargemen. From the triumphal arches of Louis XIV to the peaceful waters of the canal Saint-Martin, it preserves the memory of a hard-working and generous Paris, today become one of the most endearing and most vibrant neighbourhoods in the capital.

At the gates of the city

Before becoming an arrondissement, the 10th was a string of faubourgs: the faubourg Saint-Denis and the faubourg Saint-Martin, two ancient roads leading north, lined with market gardens, tanneries and artisans' workshops set up outside the walls of Paris to escape the city's taxes. It was in this still-rural landscape that Henri IV had built, in 1607, the hôpital Saint-Louis, intended to isolate plague victims far from the city. Its architecture of brick and stone, ordered around a silent courtyard, remains one of the most moving hospital ensembles in Paris.

Under the reign of Louis XIV, two triumphal arches came to celebrate the glory of the Sun King: the porte Saint-Denis, raised in 1672 by the architect François Blondel, then the porte Saint-Martin, built two years later by Pierre Bullet. Built on the site of former fortified gates, they marked the solemn entrance into the capital and announced, from that time, the vocation of passage and welcome that would remain that of the arrondissement.

The century of the canal and the stations

In 1802, Bonaparte ordered the digging of a canal to supply Paris with drinking water and facilitate the transport of goods. The works, slowed by the Napoleonic wars, were completed in 1825: the canal Saint-Martin was born, with its locks, its cast-iron footbridges and its banks soon planted with trees. It quickly became an industrious artery, plied by barges laden with wood, stone and wine, while the surrounding faubourgs filled with workshops and warehouses.

The middle of the 19th century completed the transformation of the neighbourhood with the arrival of the railway: the gare du Nord, opened in 1846 then magnificently rebuilt by Jacques Hittorff between 1861 and 1865, and the gare de l'Est, inaugurated in 1849, made the arrondissement the gateway of Paris towards northern and eastern Europe. Around them flourished ready-to-wear clothing, costume jewellery and the wholesale trade of the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, while in 1828 the passage Brady opened, a covered gallery of thoroughly 19th-century elegance.

A people of the faubourgs

This Paris of labour, dense and working-class, was also at all times a Paris of protest. The faubourgs Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, peopled with artisans and workers, saw barricades rise during the Trois Glorieuses of 1830, the June days of 1848 and the Commune de Paris in 1871, notably around the quartier du Château d'Eau, which takes its name from a monumental fountain built at the beginning of the 19th century on the site of the present place de la République.

This working-class temperament was compounded, over the generations, by a remarkable mingling of cultures. Artisans from the provinces, then, in the 20th century, Turkish, Kurdish, Indian and Pakistani communities made the passage Brady a veritable Little India of Paris, spices and saris displayed beneath its glass roof, while the neighbouring streets echoed with all the accents of the world.

The metamorphosis of a neighbourhood

The decline of industrial activity, over the course of the 20th century, gradually gave way to a gentle reconversion: workshops turned into lofts, warehouses reinvented, the canal rediscovered as a place of promenade rather than of trade alone. The film Hôtel du Nord by Marcel Carné, in 1938, forever immortalised the poetic atmosphere of its quays, durably popularising the romantic image of the 10th arrondissement far beyond its borders.

Since the 1980s, the rehabilitation of the banks, pleasure boating and the opening of numerous shops have accompanied an assertive renewal, without ever erasing the working-class and generous identity of the neighbourhood. The rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, long devoted to the wholesale trade, has opened up to a new generation of restaurants and shops, without losing any of its authenticity.

Living in the 10th today

Today, the 10th arrondissement offers that rare blend of authenticity and refinement that appeals to those in search of a true Paris. The quays of the canal Saint-Martin, where one strolls as evening falls, the Haussmannian façades that sit alongside the faubourg buildings, the silent triumphal arches and the historic hospitals compose a dense heritage, on a human scale, far from ostentation.

To settle in the 10th is to choose an arrondissement that has never ceased to welcome, to mingle worlds and to reinvent itself without disavowal. Between the lock and the cobbles of the faubourgs, between station and garden, it offers its inhabitants a singular art of living, shaped by four centuries of living history.