The Rue Crémieux is a one-block pedestrian street in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, originally built as workers' housing. The street has been widely recommended to tourists for its quaint painted housefronts, and has become a popular destination for filming and for social media photos.
History
editThe street was planned as the Millaud development in 1857, to provide housing for workers, and almost all the buildings were constructed at that time.[1] It was known as the Rue Millaud from 1865 to 1898, when it was renamed for Adolphe Crémieux.[2] During the 1910 Great Flood of Paris, the water from the Seine reached as high as 1.75 metres (5.7 ft) on one of the buildings. A commemorative plaque marks the location.[1] The street was closed to vehicles in 1993.[1]
Appearance and popularity
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The Rue Crémieux is 144 metres (472 ft) long, running between the Rue de Lyon and the Rue de Bercy, and cobbled,[3] lined on both sides with relatively small terraced houses, on one side a little over one room deep.[4] One houses an unmarked hostel, the Hôtel particulier.[5] Most of the house-fronts are painted in pastel colours, described by one writer as "candy-hued",[6] and some also have trompe-l'œil decoration, including lilac trained around an entrance and a cat stalking birds.[3][4] It has been compared to Portobello Road in London[5] and the Venetian island of Burano and widely recommended for tourist photos and used for fashion shoots.[3][4]
The street's popularity for selfies, Instagram posts, and video shoots has come to annoy the residents, who have started an Instagram account of their own to depict those taking and posing for photos[7][8] and asked the city council for a gate to close off the Rue Crémieux on weekends, in the evening, and at the golden hour.[6][9][10]
References
edit- ^ a b c Rodolphe Trouilleux, Unexplored Paris, rev. ed. Paris: Parigramme, 2009, ISBN 9782840965732, p. 96.
- ^ Félix marquis de Rochegude, Promenades dans toutes les rues de Paris, par arrondissements: origines des rues, maisons historiques ou curieuses, anciens et nouveaux hotels enseignes, XIIe Arrondissement, Paris: Hachette, 1910, OCLC 26972236, p. 15 (in French).
- ^ a b c "Rue Crémieux: The most colourful street in Paris", Paris is Beautiful City Guide, retrieved 11 March 2019.
- ^ a b c "Rue Crémieux: This charming cobbled backstreet may be the most Instagram-perfect block in Paris", Atlas Obscura, retrieved 11 March 2019.
- ^ a b Nancy Li, "Rue Cremieux: Paris' Very Own Portobello Road", Untapped Cities, 25 October 2015.
- ^ a b Danielle Fowler, "Paris residents plea for influencers to leave Instagram's most famous street alone", Harper's Bazaar, 7 March 2019.
- ^ Carole Blanchard, "Paris: la très 'instagramable' rue Crémieux se rebelle contre les influenceurs", BFM TV, 4 March 2019 (in French).
- ^ Damien Leloup and Morgane Tual, "Instagram: un bouc émissaire du tourisme de masse?", Le Monde, 7 July 2019 (in French).
- ^ "Paris street to 'shut out Instagrammers'", BBC News, 7 March 2019.
- ^ Bastien Munch, "'C'est devenu l'enfer': à Paris, l'exaspération des habitants de la rue Crémieux face au défilé des instagrameurs", France Info, 3 March 2019 (with audio) (in French).
External links
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Media related to Rue Crémieux at Wikimedia Commons- Clubcremieux on Instagram
