Random Cool Things in Paris, part 2

Here's another couple of fun or interesting things we've seen over the past couple of months, which for one reason or another we didn't write a whole post about at the time.

1) Les Passages de Paris
We Minnesotans like to take the rather dubious credit for inventing the indoor shopping mall (oh how I do loathe Southdale). But we can blame the concept on the Parisians, who began building covered, semi-enclosed shopping passages in the early 19th century. Frankfurt school philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote a great deal about them, if you're into that kind of thing. One day back in February, Jeff and I set out to explore some of them.

Some of them are lovely, with what appear to be original lamps and decorations, and are filled with high-end clothing, antiques, gift shops, little cafés and restaurants, or design offices. Others are less well-preserved and a little ratty, but still retain some charm. If you get out of the center of town, you can find passages that are full of cheap wholesale clothing shops. Up by Porte St-Denis, some of them seem to host prostitutes, but we're not sure.

2. Église St-Eustache
We went into this church on a whim - we just happened to be walking by, and we wondered what it was like inside. Pretty cool, it turns out. This church was built in the late 16th-early 17th century, so it is a good example of the late Gothic style. Here's their website, in French, but if you've got Google translator you can figure it out.

And here's the apse end, peeking out through the Passage St-Eustache.

The nave and the organ.

Not sure who scandalized Peter Lorre so much,

but we didn't know he was a Catholic cardinal, either.

St-Eustache is right by les Halles in the 1st, for centuries the largest wholesale food market in Paris and the setting of Émile Zola's novel, Le Ventre de Paris [The Belly of Paris]. But the old market was demolished in 1971 and the food vendors banished to the suburbs. The diorama below dramatizes their departure.

There is now an underground shopping mall and a large, not terribly appealing park where the old Halles used to be. The city has ambitious plans to remake the space yet again.

We have just over two weeks left here in Paris, and parts of them will be pretty busy, but we'll try to update a couple more times before we leave.