Walking tour to canal Saint-Martin or Spot of Paris’ underground

The suburb of the Canal Saint-Martin presents by itself a lot of architectural masterpieces. Just imagine: the old canal with scaffold bridges and sluices, where the queen Hortense de Beauharnais, the Napoleon’s stepdaughter, walked. The city’s gallows for infuriated or just unliked by imperator nobles also was there. Imagine the ancient hospital of St Louis –made by the order of Henri IX from the red bricks and white stones. In olden times, the hospital was surrounded by a high wall with a ditch and was protected by Swiss Guards. Then imagine the quartier Goutte-d-Or, which has been in the past a small village with a vineland. This vine was provided to the court of the king. Nowadays 56 different nationalities live there. You could find third-generation African sorcerers from jungles, Maghrebian canteens, North African hairdressers. And that is not all. You could add to the picture the Gare du Nord railway station and the church where Jeanne-d-Arc was praying before the Paris assault. Is it amazing, isn’t it?

This quartier is incredibly beautiful by its uniqueness. There is a special spirit of freedom; desperate youngness and sophisticated antiquity; underground and romantic. Open for yourself this congery of incongruous, quartier of enigmas and eclectics. It is a real Paris of the beaten path.