Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Map by Stephen Ramsay Cartography
- Introduction: The Place de la Bastille
- 1 ‘What's that poor creature doing here?’: the area and the fortress before the Revolution of 1789
- 2 ‘Thought blew the Bastille apart’: the fall of the fortress and the revolutionary years, 1789–1815
- 3 ‘The strategy of the generals of Africa shattered’: the Restoration, Orleanist and Second Republic Years, 1815–1851
- 4 ‘Where is the noise of the storm that I love?’: The Second Empire from Haussmann to the Commune
- 5 ‘Satan's bagpipes’: La Belle Époque's forty-three years of peace
- 6 ‘Villains, stars and everybody in between’: The First War and the entre-deux-guerres
- 7 ‘Slicked hair and splendid sideburns’: Occupation and Liberation
- 8 ‘Let's have some sun!’: post-Gaullism and the Mitterrand years
- 9 ‘A building, not a monument’: the construction of the Bastille Opéra
- 10 ‘A real earthquake’: the impact of the Opéra on the quartier
- 11 Flânerie in the archive: the Faubourg/Bastille today
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - ‘A real earthquake’: the impact of the Opéra on the quartier
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Map by Stephen Ramsay Cartography
- Introduction: The Place de la Bastille
- 1 ‘What's that poor creature doing here?’: the area and the fortress before the Revolution of 1789
- 2 ‘Thought blew the Bastille apart’: the fall of the fortress and the revolutionary years, 1789–1815
- 3 ‘The strategy of the generals of Africa shattered’: the Restoration, Orleanist and Second Republic Years, 1815–1851
- 4 ‘Where is the noise of the storm that I love?’: The Second Empire from Haussmann to the Commune
- 5 ‘Satan's bagpipes’: La Belle Époque's forty-three years of peace
- 6 ‘Villains, stars and everybody in between’: The First War and the entre-deux-guerres
- 7 ‘Slicked hair and splendid sideburns’: Occupation and Liberation
- 8 ‘Let's have some sun!’: post-Gaullism and the Mitterrand years
- 9 ‘A building, not a monument’: the construction of the Bastille Opéra
- 10 ‘A real earthquake’: the impact of the Opéra on the quartier
- 11 Flânerie in the archive: the Faubourg/Bastille today
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In July 1998 Philippe Denis, president of the association SOS-Paris which was founded in the late 1970s to defend the capital's architectural heritage, stated: ‘La construction de l'Opéra-Bastille a provoqué dans le quartier un véritable séisme’ / ‘The building of the Opéra-Bastille caused a real earthquake in the quartier.’ It unquestionably brought about the most dramatic changes in the area since the days of Haussmann, hastening and intensifying the process of yuppification that has characterized eastern Paris over the past thirty or so years.
The changes in the area over the past twenty or so years are a microcosm of those that Paris, in common with virtually every large Western city, has experienced, but because of the Faubourg's radical traditions and the catalytic effect of the Opéra they have probably been more dramatic than in any other part of Paris. The great film critic Serge Daney, interviewed on video in a Bastille café in July 1991, spoke of the area as his ‘vraie patrie’ / ‘real homeland’, for he was born there into a modest milieu, received his early film education in the local cinemas and between 1974 and 1981 worked there for Cahiers du cinéma, thus embodying the end of the old quartier and the onset of the new. The population of the administrative area known as Sainte-Marguerite, bounded by the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine and the rue de Charonne, was 23 per cent working-class in 1954; by 1990 this figure was down to 9 per cent, and the quality of the housing stock had risen significantly.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Place de la BastilleThe Story of a Quartier, pp. 136 - 148Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2011