Les Passages Couverts

I lied about taking you on a tour of the Metro. Today was actually a tour of the passages couverts, or famous Parisian arcades.

We met near the Louvre to being our tour. Unbeknownst to us, though, it was protest day!





The woman in the right of this photo is holding a sign that says "No to unemployment." Personally I'm for unemployment, but our student handbook expressly prohibits participation in rallies and protests, so we stayed on the sidelines.

Nearby: Rohan Street! I looked around but I didn't see Théoden or Éowyn. (What with LOTR allusions and last entry's reference to mantiques, this blog is becoming officially nerdy.)

This might be the best picture of Evelyn (second from left) ever taken.

Welcome to Galerie Vero-Dodat, established in 1837 by butchers Vero and Dodat. Shopping arcades like this one came into popular use in the early 19th century, providing leisurely flaneurs with a clean, covered, aesthetically-pleasing space perfect for aimless strolling between the busy streets.

The arcades were also a practical innovation, affording pedestrians dry, air-conditioned passage from one street to another. The boutiques that lined the shops would have represented a range of products and services aimed at middle-class patrons. Since pane-glass windows came into use around the time of the arcades' construction, window displays (and window shopping) also became possible.

This shop in the Galerie Vero-Dodat is clearly no longer a Papeterie (paper store). According to Paul, the high cost of rent in these historic arcades means that the merchants are usually antiques dealers, or owners of high-end fashion boutiques like this shoe and handbag store.

Some of the arcade stores are more or less original, though. The Cafe De L'Epoque has been in business since the galerie was built.

I tried to take a somewhat artistic shot of this woman at her balcony, but I think it's kind of funny that the "Free Access Toilet" sign ended up being so much more prominent.

The sign for Galerie Vivienne, stop number two on our arcade tour.

The Galerie Vivienne has a more elegant and spacious design than the Vero-Dodat. The mosaic floors, arched windows, and Greek figures framing the central door reflect the early-1800s emphasis on classical art. Notice the iron and glass ceiling common to most Paris arcades.

Unfortunately it was at this point that my camera decided to run out of batteries, so I didn't get any pictures of Passage Choiseul (built 1829 and still a very vibrant commerce space), Passage des Princes (one of the youngest arcades--1860-- but completely torn down and rebuilt to look identical to the original, in 1985), or the most famous (and second oldest, at 1799) Passage des Panoramas, whose initial draw was the presence of two (now absent) panoramic paintings. The oldest (1798) arcade, Passage du Caire, was in a somewhat sketchy part of town where we saw our first Parisian hookers, so perhaps it's for the best that I didn't get any pictures there, either.

So that was today. Then I came home and had another of my famously awkward dinner conversations with my host dad. He dished up some sort of unidentifiable baked dish that took us quite awhile to come to a mutual understanding about. It turned out to be a whitefish from the Riviera region, baked in lobster sauce. Neither of us knew the other's word for lobster, though, so that was a problem. That conversation progressed into a more general discussion of seafood, and he noted that my host mom had a particular fondness for some sort of creature that "is sometimes red, sometimes purple, with lots of needles. It lives in corners?"


"Urchins?" I ventured. Christophe was not familiar with the word urchin, though, so some ridiculous charades of urchin behavior ensued (I'm not even sure how I managed to mime the actions of a creature that has no features and doesn't move, but finally we understood one another). Oh, dinner. What a daily challenge you are.