12th arrondissement

Highlights: Faubourg Saint-Antoine · Bastille · Aligre · Gare de Lyon · Bercy · Reuilly · Picpus · Bois de Vincennes

Between the foliage of the bois de Vincennes and the banks of the Seine, the 12th arrondissement tells a story of worked wood, of stored wine and of departing trains. A former artisanal faubourg become one of the green lungs of the capital, it has been able to turn each of its legacies into so many places to live. Here, the working-class and popular past composes today a singular art of living, between preserved memory and rediscovered nature.

A faubourg born of wood and of the hand

From the Middle Ages, the southern part of the faubourg Saint-Antoine developed around the abbey of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs, founded in the 12th century. In 1657, Louis XIV granted by letters patent a franchise to the craftsmen settled on these abbey lands: freed from the strict rules of the Parisian guilds, joiners, cabinetmakers and turners could establish themselves there freely. The faubourg became the great workshop of Parisian furniture, a vocation still recalled today by its street names and its preserved artisanal courtyards, such as the cour de l'Étoile d'Or or the passage du Chantier, where the cobbles have kept their workshop frontages.

Nearby, the marché d'Aligre has enlivened the neighbourhood since the late 18th century. The covered market Beauvau, built in 1843, complements the open square where market gardeners, second-hand dealers and residents come to rummage to this day. This local commerce, never interrupted, anchors the 12th in a popular and living tradition that three centuries have not extinguished.

From Bercy to the gare de Lyon, the rise of a neighbourhood

The arrondissement took its present shape in 1860, when Paris annexed the neighbouring communes and reorganised its layout into twenty arrondissements. The village of Bercy, then covered with guinguettes and warehouses, entered the capital with its vast wine trade: from the 18th century, the wines arriving by the Seine escaped the Parisian octroi there, making this quarter the largest wine market in the world in the 19th century. Its storehouses lined along the river drew a veritable village within the city, with its own cobbled streets and merchants' houses.

In 1900, to welcome the travellers of the Exposition universelle, the gare de Lyon acquired a new building surmounted by a tall clock tower visible from all across eastern Paris. On the upper floor, the Buffet de la gare de Lyon opened its doors in 1901: painted ceilings, gilding and frescoes evoking the destinations of the PLM network made it, from the outset, a place of exception. Renamed Le Train Bleu in 1963, it was listed as a monument historique in 1972 and remains one of the rare grand Belle Époque interiors of Paris to survive intact.

A stronghold of the history of Paris

The 12th also carries the memory of the great Parisian uprisings. At its edge stood the fortress of the Bastille, built at the end of the 14th century under Charles V, taken by the people on 14 July 1789. On the square that has kept its name, the July Column, inaugurated in 1840, honours the memory of the Parisians who fell during the Trois Glorieuses of 1830.

Further east, the place de la Nation, the former place du Trône laid out in 1660 for the entry of Louis XIV, became for a time the place du Trône-Renversé under the Revolution before taking its present name in 1880. It has been surmounted since 1899 by the Triomphe de la République, a monumental group by Jules Dalou, and has for centuries hosted the Foire du Trône, one of the oldest funfairs in France. At the edge of the wood, the keep of the château de Vincennes, completed in 1370, watches over this history at once royal and revolutionary.

The reinvention of an industrial quarter

The deindustrialisation of the 20th century offered the 12th the chance of an exemplary metamorphosis. The Vincennes railway line, closed in 1969, left behind a stone viaduct crossing the arrondissement from east to west. Beneath its arches, the viaduc des Arts has welcomed, since the 1990s, workshops of the art crafts — cabinetmaking, restoration, lutherie — which perpetuate the artisanal vocation of the nearby faubourg.

On its deck, the railway line became in 1993 the Promenade plantée, renamed the coulée verte René-Dumont: the world's first elevated linear garden, forerunner of New York's High Line, it offers several kilometres of greenery above the rooftops. At the same time, as the wholesale wine trade moved to Rungis, the former storehouses of Bercy underwent their own renaissance: the parc de Bercy opened in 1997, while the cour Saint-Émilion and its preserved cobbled storehouses gave birth to Bercy Village, given over to shops and strolling.

Living today between nature and savoir-faire

Today, the 12th arrondissement combines scales with rare elegance. The bois de Vincennes, the largest green space in Paris, offers lakes, a rose garden and bridle paths at the gates of the city, while the banks of Bercy invite a stroll along the water.

Between the ever-lively marché d'Aligre, the workshops of the viaduc des Arts and the façades lining the avenue Daumesnil, the arrondissement has known how to keep its popular and artisanal character while becoming one of the most sought-after in the capital. Haussmannian buildings, craftsmen's courtyards and hanging gardens answer one another with ease. To live in the 12th is to choose a neighbourhood where history has never stood still, where every storehouse, every workshop, every station has known how to reinvent itself without ever denying what it was.