Paris in July: Maps of Paris

Paris! We all would love to be there now instead of locked down in our homes to avoid contagion and pandemic. Fortunately, Tamara at the blog Thyme for Tea is offering us all a chance to daydream about real or imaginary trips to the City of Light!

Paris maps from my trips over the years -- before iPhone maps.
Note that a city map in French is called a "plan" while the word
"carte," translated "map" is only for a larger area. Don't get confused!

For at least my first few Paris-themed blog posts, my intention is to explore the topic of Paris maps -- always an essential tool for both tourists and native Parisians. Paris streets are never laid out in a grid pattern, but rather consist of central hubs -- like the Arc de Triomphe, and spokes, like the many streets radiating from the Place Charles de Gaulle where it stands. If you begin walking or driving on the wrong street, you are soon very far from where you want to be. Today, I'll talk about practical modern maps that I've used over the years. Later I'll look at other historic maps.

The Arc de Triomphe at Place Charles de Gaulle and surrounding avenues.
This is the most impressive example of the hub-and-spokes city plan. (Source: google maps).

Nowadays, online maps guide you as you go, using your iPhone or equivalent. Maybe you also rely on the "Plan du Quartier" (local map). This posted panel at the exit or inside of every Metro station can help you figure out the nearby streets -- particularly useful in case you are disoriented when you come up from underground.

At the exit of this Metro station, you can see the map just behind the tallest
person's head! (Photo from our trip in 2013)

Reading the posted map. (source: Paris Digest)

In the past, everyone had their own favorite type of paper map. You may remember that single-page maps could be a challenge to use as they were huge and you had to fold them up to see only what you needed. Map books, on the other hand, showed bits of the city on different pages, and it was quite difficult to figure out what page you needed. When you got to an edge, to a fold in the map, or to the end of your page, you could be in trouble.

From our first trip to Paris, we always preferred folding maps. We particularly liked the Recta Foldex maps shown in the photo above -- the red ones. I always carried a map with me. That's why you see such wear and tear on my old maps. Of course one of my favorite memories (at least before the iPhone) is of the frequent occurrence that I would unfold a map, and a helpful Parisian would stop and offer to help me find my way. (About the reputation of Parisians for being un-helpful -- I've never found this to be true!)

Important warning: free advertising maps are given out at hotel desks and restaurants, but these are dangerous because they don't include all the streets. If you try to use such a map, you can suddenly find yourself helplessly NEAR but not AT your destination. For example, the Picasso Museum is on an obscure street that's not included (or at least didn't used to be included) on those maps. At any rate, this advice was true in the past. Good luck!

I love looking at the old maps and seeing some of the bigger changes to the city. The maps we have kept from various past years can be very interesting to compare. For example, on our oldest map, you can see a big blank where they razed the central market, Les Halles. A few years later, our newer map showed the shopping center that replaced it (a dreadful modern replacement). Or you can see the blank cleared space near the church of Saint Merry on the old map; the next map indicates the new modern art museum, the Centre Pompidou, that was built there. 

Here is another example of how the maps reflect change. From one map to the next, the old slaughterhouses, the Abbatoirs de Vaugirard, were replaced by a park:

In 1976, our favorite map showed the Abattoirs de Vaugirard -- that is,
the slaughterhouses that produced meat for the Paris region. 

By 1989, the newer edition of the map showed how Paris was being modernized.
I wrote a black "X" on the Parc Georges Brassens at the site of the Abbatoirs.

Slaughterhouses did not belong inside a huge city any more, and as the map shows, the former site of the Abbatoirs was made into Parc Georges Brassens, named for the popular singer. A few of the old iron structures were left standing on the site to host a used-book fair at the "X" that I wrote on the map. While I never visited the slaughterhouses, I did go to the book fair once, on my never ending search for new Mona Lisa parodies! Here is the same area on the current google map:

Parc Georges Brassens is in the 15th arrondissement in the
southwestern quarter of the city. (Source, google maps).

Closer look: Parc Georges Brassens today.

In these examples you also see the nearby Boulevards des Marechaux (Boulevards of the Marshals). These Boulevards make a circle around the city of Paris. Older maps specify the names of the individual marshals, who were military officials under Napoleon (plus a few others), but google maps now use the generic name for the entire ring road, which was laid out in the 1840s during one of the many re-structurings of the Parisian network of roads. Today, if you wanted to drive in a circle around Paris (or part of this route) you would take the much faster limited-access Boulevard Périphérique, which is just beyond the boulevards named for marshals.

Today: the map of Paris from google maps on which of course you can zoom in and out to see where you are going.

Frankly, I would rather be locked down in my own house in Ann Arbor, Michigan, than in any of the very cramped quarters -- apartments or hotels -- where I've stayed in Paris over the years, but still, when we dream of Paris we dream of the freedom to explore the city in better times, don't we?

Blog post ©2020 mae sander for mae food dot blogspot dot com.