Bordeaux and Palmiers

Yesterday, I took you all on a walk down rue Mouffetard. Rue Mouffetard runs very close to another large market street: rue Monge.

Rue Monge is home to the Place Monge market, but it’s also home to a lot of secrets that I had never seen before… and I walk down this street every day. This time, however, I did it armed with a camera. I started right by Place Monge and walked down the street towards the Seine.

Just in case anyone was wondering… this is why I moved to Paris.

Moving on.

I had never noticed this door before my walk down rue Monge. It looks like any door leading to an apartment building. But today, for some reason, it was opened, and so I peeked inside…

And found an old Roman arena!

I love these signs. They’re all over Paris, and they alert the visitor to the history of the place where they are standing. Sometimes, they appear in random locations to let you know where a famous historical figure lived or died.

This one explains that the arena I found is called the Arena of Lutèce, which was the old Roman word for Paris… or the city that stood in the location where Paris now stands in Roman times.

Unfortunately for American tourists, the signs are not translated. Fortunately for American tourists who read this blog, I speak French!

“This amphitheater was probably constructed at the end of the 1st century AD. It is built simply out of stones without the use of any bricks. It was ruined by barbarian invasions during the 3rd century, and its materials were used by the Gallo-Romans, who took refuge in Ile de la Cité. Its existence was ignored in the middle ages, and its exact location was unknown until 1858. It was rediscovered with the opening of Rue Monge in 1869, on a piece of land acquired by the Compagnie Générale des Omnibus, and it was to be destroyed to leave space for stables. The public tried to buy the land back, but the ampitheater was not, in fact, restored to its current state until 1917.”

Or something like that.

It appears to be used as a sort of park nowadays. It was lunch time, so some kids from the local school were hanging around, playing soccer and talking.

I absolutely love to watch old men playing pétanque.  Culturally, the game has a lot of significance in France, especially in the South. I wrote a sociology paper on the differences between pétanque culture up here in the north and in the south, where I used to live. I’ll spare you all the details, but I’ll say now that watching these men assemble, all dressed for the game, every day at the same times, makes my heartstrings go all wacky. I love them. I want to go over and hug them. But pétanque rules do not allow for that sort of malarky.

My heart goes out to this bench. It looks so lonely.

This could be because I was just tearing up about the old men playing pétanque and smoking Gauloises. It could also have something to do with the fact that sometimes, my heart goes out to inanimate objects.

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