Past and Present No. 6: Charonne

This little exercise in comparison is located in Charonne in north-east Paris, described in loving detail in parisinvisible as the last authentic village in Paris. The church of Saint-Germain de Charonne has retained all its character as a village parish church and almost uniquely in Paris still stands in its own burial ground. The postcard and photograph are separated by a century and apart from the removal of the cast iron vespasienne almost nothing has changed. The church is on rue de Bagnolet, almost opposite the former Gare de Charonne (now a nightclub) served by the long defunct Petite Ceinture orbital railway. The photograph below shows the tracks of la Petite Ceinture disappearing into the gloom of the tunnel in the direction of Ménilmontant.

La Petite Ceinture: a Cultural History

On Friday, September 16th. 1870, Edmond de Goncourt recorded in his Journal:

Today, I amused myself by travelling right round Paris on the ring railway. It is an amusing sight, that vision, swift as speed, afforded as one emerges from the darkness of a tunnel, of rows of white tents, of guns rolling along country lanes, of river banks lined with little crenellated paprapets of olden times, of canteens with their tables and glasses set out in the sunshine and their waitresses with braid sewn along the hems of their jackets and skirts – a vision constantly interrupted and blocked by a high embankment, at the end of which there reappears the familiar horizon of the yellow ramparts dotted with the little silhouettes of National Guards.

It was a turbulent time for a pleasure trip. As de Goncourt encircled Paris, Prussian forces were doing the same thing, just a few miles further out. Paris was protected by a continuous line of fortification but by the following Monday (19th.) the city was completely cut off and a four month nightmare had commenced.


More than half a century passed before we hear from our next witness, Mr. J E N Heygate who writes with a brief account of a similar circular trip to the Railway Magazine who published it in the issue dated March 1925. Mr. Heygate’s observations suggest a service in sharp decline – passengers few and far between and an average speed of 15 miles per hour. It would be intriguing to confirm whether Mr. Heygate and Sir John Edward Nourse Heygate, 4th Baronet are one and the same person. The 4th Baronet had a colourful career, among other things, achieving some notoriety as the man who cuckolded Evelyn Waugh in his first marriage to Evelyn Gardner. Heygate (1903-1976) was educated at Balliol College – the combination of the initials and an Oxford address suggest a good match.


I was lead to the Goncourt quotation by Eric Hazan in his superb book, The Invention of Paris. Hazan (of whom more in a future posting) is fascinated by the Petite Ceinture (PC) and tracked down two more literary recollections of travel on the Ceinture from Paul Fargue and Eugène Dabit. The lingering presence of the Ceinture more than 70 years after its demise, particularly in north-east Paris is especially intriguing to Hazan as a chronicler of a version of Paris that is now lost. Today’s postcard shows a clockwise PC train racing through the cutting towards the tunnel on the east of the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont – the next stop will be Belleville – Villette. The spectators on the footbridge are a fraction of a second away from total immersion in a cloud of steam and smoke. Some previous posts on this subject can be reached from here and here.

Buttes-Chaumont – the Permanent Way

This postcard view has been taken from the southern heights of the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Today these slopes are densely wooded and this view is unobtainable. The railway is the Petite Ceinture, the long defunct Parisian orbital railway that runs through the eastern flank of the park enabling us to unite two obsessions in a single posting. The photographer is standing on top of the Tunnel de Belleville from which the tracks run north and leave the park at the point where the road bridge carrying the rue de Crimée travels overhead. The eastern boundary fence in the park has been breached and offers one of the easiest access points on to the trackbed of the Petite Ceinture. This writer is routinely mocked by friends and family for an aversion to any activity that might be construed, however remotely, as unauthorised so this was a major step in more ways than one. Which is how these photographs came to be taken.

La promenade est interdite sur la Petite Ceinture, comme pour toute voie ferrée appartenant au réseau national. L’alinéa 5 de l’article 73 du décret n° 730 du 22 mars 1942, modifié par le décret n° 69-601 du 10 juin 1969, portant règlement d’administration publique sur la police la sûreté et l’exploitation des voies ferrées d’intérêt général et d’intérêt local (J.O du 23 août 1942) stipule qu’ "il est défendu à toute personne de pénétrer, circuler ou stationner, sans autorisation régulière, dans les parties de la voie ferrée, ou de ses dépendances qui ne sont pas affectées à la circulation publique, d’y introduire des animaux ou d’y laisser introduire ceux dont elle est responsable, d’y faire circuler ou stationner aucun véhicule étranger au service, d’y jeter ou déposer des matériaux ou objets quelconques, d’entrer dans l’enceinte du chemin de fer ou d’en sortir par d’autres issues que celles affectées à cet usage.


Down on the hallowed ground of the Petite Ceinture, having transgressed line 5 of article 73 of decree 730 of March 22nd 1942, modified by decree 69-601 of June 10th 1969, it all looks very well cared for. The ballast has been renewed and is free of weeds while the tracks themselves show little evidence of rust formation. The railway emerges from the tunnel to the south into a cutting, the west side of which is buttressed by a brick built wall with alcoves adapted by rough sleepers using outsize plastic groundsheets to provide shelter and privacy. To the north where the tracks run underneath rue de Crimée, a branch that formerly served the abattoirs at La Villette diverges to the right. Some hardcore urban explorers were already present at the mouth of the tunnel engaged on a project of their own. Ignoring them in time-honoured fashion I walked north for a few hundred yards taking photographs before a deep seated fear of authority warned me the time to retreat was at hand.

In Search of La Petite Ceinture

Last April we took a walk through the eastern fringe of Paris, following, so far as possible, the line of La Petite Ceinture, the city’s long abandoned circular railway route. Previous postings on this topic are here and here. The continued existence of this anachronism is a source of fascination to many and the subject of an exhaustive monograph, La Saga de la Petite Ceinture by Bruno Carrière. The need for this orbital railway rapidly declined after the opening of the Métro and regular service on la Petite Ceinture ceased in 1934. It is ironic that after more than 75 years the migration of workplaces from the centre to the suburbs and the development of high-density housing along the outer boulevards have created a demand for the very links that the Petite Ceinture was intended to deliver. Contractors are hard at work tearing up the roadway to accommodate the planned extension of tram route T3 from Porte d’Ivry to Porte de la Chapelle following a route that closely shadows the line of the Petite Ceinture and is due to open in 2012.

Our northward exploration of the Est-Ceinture began at Bel-Air and concluded at the entrance to the tunnel that runs under the streets of Ménilmontant, having crossed east-west axes at avenue de St-Mandé, Cours de Vincennes, rue d’Avron and rue de Bagnolet. The streets we walked were uncannily deserted as if the energy of the city were dissipated at the margins. Strong sunlight produced intense contrasts of light and shade, enhancing the sense of dislocation. The track infrastructure is heavily defended with high security fencing to discourage the urban explorers. It must be conceded that the itinerary lacked much in the way of spectacle so the excitement at encountering one of only two level crossings in Paris (in rue de Lagny) has to be seen in context. The real reward was visiting just those nondescript locations that railways so often run through – places whose identity and distinctiveness have been silently extinguished by neglect but have the compensatory merit of having mostly escaped the attention of developers (often because of the presence of the railway).

The vintage postcard below shows an extérieure train departing southbound from the station Avenue de Vincennes as photographed from one of the logements on the south side of Cours de Vincennes. The gas holders on the left have been replaced by the Charonne métro workshops and the Collège Maurice Ravel while a 10 storey housing development occupies the area on the right. The image is pre-1914 and shows an industrialised zone of which no trace remains other than the silent rusting tracks of the Petite Ceinture.