Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2008-03-15 07:24 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2008-03-15 07:24 pm
Entry tags:
Things I wish I'd known
Have been working diligently on the horribly, awfully nerdy tour guide of Mizzie d00m, which has given me some lovely time with Google, Googlemaps, and old maps of Paris. This has led to an ever-growing list of things I didn't know when I actually visited Paris:
1. Legend has it that Hugo stayed in an inn in Montfermeil, Place de la Halle, called "Au rendez-vous d'Austerlitz." Sneaky bastard. On the one hand I wish I'd known this, but on the other hand I was already lost as fuck in Montfermeil just looking for the Fontaine Jean Valjean. Lord only knows what would've happened if I'd tried to find this.
2. If I'd read this article more closely I would've caught on that 40 rue des Archives is not where Valjean lived. It just happens to have a plaque mentioning that that part of the street used to be the rue de l'Homme-Armé. No. 7 would've been the fourth building on the other side of the street. D'oh.
3. The Jardin du Luxembourg used to be kinda diamond-shaped, with the rue de l'Ouest along its southwest side. Now only the top half is left, but the rue de l'Ouest is still there as the lower half of the rue d'Assas. I think I actually knew this, sort of, when I visited Paris, but couldn't be arsed to check it out. Oh well.
4. I had no way of knowing this before I got my giant .pdf map of 1830s Paris, but the Gorbeau house would've been somewhere down near where the rue Rubens intersects the blvd de l'Hôpital. I had a suspicion that the current No. 50 and 52, which I photographed, were nowhere near where Hugo intended, but not having any idea what had become of the Marché aux Chevaux/rue du Petit Banquier/rue des Vignes/whatever, I couldn't exactly pinpoint where he was talking about.
5. And, as I posted about back in November, the present-day rue du Champ de l'Alouette isn't the same as the old one. *headdesk* Rue Corvisart. Not that it freaking matters, because I'm betting the only remnant of the Field of the Lark is a few scrubby trees planted outside some ugly '60s apartment complex, but still.
Obviously the tour guide of nerdy doom will be updated to reflect all this, I just wish I had photos.
(Also, how sad is it that just writing this post led me off on a bunch of random tangents through gallica.bnf.fr and a whole bunch of random websites? Oops.)
1. Legend has it that Hugo stayed in an inn in Montfermeil, Place de la Halle, called "Au rendez-vous d'Austerlitz." Sneaky bastard. On the one hand I wish I'd known this, but on the other hand I was already lost as fuck in Montfermeil just looking for the Fontaine Jean Valjean. Lord only knows what would've happened if I'd tried to find this.
2. If I'd read this article more closely I would've caught on that 40 rue des Archives is not where Valjean lived. It just happens to have a plaque mentioning that that part of the street used to be the rue de l'Homme-Armé. No. 7 would've been the fourth building on the other side of the street. D'oh.
3. The Jardin du Luxembourg used to be kinda diamond-shaped, with the rue de l'Ouest along its southwest side. Now only the top half is left, but the rue de l'Ouest is still there as the lower half of the rue d'Assas. I think I actually knew this, sort of, when I visited Paris, but couldn't be arsed to check it out. Oh well.
4. I had no way of knowing this before I got my giant .pdf map of 1830s Paris, but the Gorbeau house would've been somewhere down near where the rue Rubens intersects the blvd de l'Hôpital. I had a suspicion that the current No. 50 and 52, which I photographed, were nowhere near where Hugo intended, but not having any idea what had become of the Marché aux Chevaux/rue du Petit Banquier/rue des Vignes/whatever, I couldn't exactly pinpoint where he was talking about.
5. And, as I posted about back in November, the present-day rue du Champ de l'Alouette isn't the same as the old one. *headdesk* Rue Corvisart. Not that it freaking matters, because I'm betting the only remnant of the Field of the Lark is a few scrubby trees planted outside some ugly '60s apartment complex, but still.
Obviously the tour guide of nerdy doom will be updated to reflect all this, I just wish I had photos.
(Also, how sad is it that just writing this post led me off on a bunch of random tangents through gallica.bnf.fr and a whole bunch of random websites? Oops.)
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This is a random question, but I'm just curious: is the Fontaine Jean Valjean the fountain that he would have drunk from, historically speaking and location-wise, or is it just a fountain named after him? The Montfermeil website is a little fuzzy on that detail.
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