City & County 04: Canal Saint-Martin
The Canal Saint-Martin from one of many arched pedestrian bridges angling over the water.
By virtue of their design, canals cut through the landscape, providing a continuous passageway for cargo boats, with an adjacent path for the humans or other animals who pulled the boats. Now that canals are no longer used for moving goods into and out of a city, their function is primarily pedestrian, offering a linear route for the walker that is typically uninterrupted by automobiles or other vehicular traffic.
In Paris, aside from Haussmann's grand boulevards that cut through existing neighborhoods to impose straight, broad roads through the city, most paths through the city centre wind through a dense network of medieval streets, requiring a visitor's constant attention to wayfinding in addition to avoiding others performing the same ritual of touristic derive (see Footnote 1).
The Canal Saint-Martin, constructed between 1802-1825 (Source: Wikipedia), provides a respite from this experience with its nearly three miles of path connecting the Canal de l'Ourcq to the Seine, upstream from Ile Saint Louis, across the river from Jardin des Plantes.
The Bassin de la Villette, the terminal basin for the canal at the Seine.
As British architectural critic Ian Nairn wrote in the 1960s:
'Un paysage de Hollande,' says Michelin. Hardly: various and apt to change gear -- down into the most chic squalor in the world, seeped in from Belleville, up into the world of the boulevards which are only a few yards away. This is an industrial canal which has been French-polished, the link between the Bassin de la Vilette and the Seine; the dark poetry is lightened but not dispersed amongst the trees, the Sunday fishermen and the repeating high-arched footbridges. The forthcoming urbanity is clearly implied and so is the sombre journey down the Aisne and Oise. (See Footnote 2)
Walking along the Canal provides perspective, or as Nairn writes, views on "the dark poetry" of its adjoining neighborhoods in a fashion that is not distinct from those found by wandering through other districts of the city. Perhaps the high-arched footbridges best-exemplify this perspective, where the pedestrian enters into the tree canopy and can, at the same time, peer down on the street and through the leaves into apartments and offices, into other lives not visible from the sidewalk.
The photos presented here were taken July 15-16, 2012, the last time I was in Paris. I found my journal from that time, which is quoted below in part:
16 July: Walked to Canal Saint-Martin -- a beautiful, unique piece of the city. More Space Invader tiles on the canal. Walked all the way to the Opera. Then back to Les Halles for steak and fries. Walked back at 8:45pm -- sunlight still streaming horizontal across/through the east-west boulevards. Noisy outside, nearly dark at 11pm.
As summer approaches in the northern hemisphere, I'm again thinking of tree-lined, water-filled corridors like the Canal Saint-Martin of late sunsets and loud nights spent wandering through cities like Paris.
A blue Space Invader tile-creature on the waterline.
Footnote 1: Of course, smartphones with international data plans or offline maps change this way-finding process significantly.
Footnote 2: Quoted from Ian Nairn's Nairn's Paris, originally published in 1968, republished in 2017 by Notting Hill Editions. Nairn is best known for Nairn's London. Both books are wide ranging, opinionated guides to the architecture, urbanism, and streets of the two cities at mid-century, offering incisive commentary that still holds value fifty-plus years later.
Three more photos to conclude:
A circular, enclosed concrete stairway at the terminus of the canal.
Red light for canal boats.
Green light for pedestrians, and perhaps the dog on the far bank.