View on the 12th Arrondissement:
the Bercy District by Heather Stimmler-Hall
There is a lot of renewal and revival all around the 12th arrondissement. One area that got a facelift – and needed it – is now thriving at Bercy village.In the 19th century Bercy was a place on the Seine just outside the Paris city limits where popular drinking and dancing halls known as "Guinguettes" could serve cheap wine free from the hefty city taxes. –. Bercy became the place where the Parisian leisure class came to have a good time, and "Bercy Fever" became the popular euphemism for having one too many.
Even after Bercy was absorbed into Paris, it remained the center of the country’s wine industry, where wines from all over France arrived by boat to be bottled and shipped out. With the arrival of modern transportation and the fashion for wines to be bottled "at the château", Bercy slowly fell into decline, and by the 1970s was a virtual ghost town. As recently as the late 1980s, the area straddling Pont Tolbiac where the 12th and 13th arrondissements meet up was nothing more than a vast wasteland of rusty railroad tracks and crumbling squatted factories.
After an extensive redevelopment over the past two decades, Bercy is once again the place where Parisians head to have a good time, with its own driverless Metro line 14 -- the Météor -- dependably available (no driver means no strikes) to take them there.
Sightseeing & Shopping
Planted where the heart of the wine district once thrived, the vast gardens of the Parc de Bercy are divided into three parts: an open lawn for games, formal gardens and vegetable plantations, and the children’s discovery park with duck pond and playground. A few of the oldest buildings remain standing as interpretive garden centers amidst 100 year old trees, and you can still see the old rails where dollies loaded with casks of wine were pushed across the white cobblestone paths. Looking over the park is the futuristic building designed by American master architect Frank Gehry, at 51, rue de Bercy. Once the home of the American Center, the building is slated to reopen in the fall of 2005 as the new Cinémathèque Française, a nonprofit association which celebrates and preserves French and foreign cinema, offering exhibits, conferences, and film screenings. For shopping head to Bercy Village, an open-air pedestrian mall located in a row of restored stone wine warehouses. Many of the shops have familiar names such as Sephora, Fnac Junior, Nature et Découverts and Résonances, and the setting is more America than France; but there are a number of specialty shops for outdoors adventures, and a nice, lively atmosphere.
Dining & Nightlife
Bercy Village has a good selection of restaurants and cafés, all with terraces on the tree-lined pedestrian only Cour St-Emilion. Avoid the touristy restaurants of Club Med World unless someone else is paying, and try the French country cooking of Partie de Campagne, with large wooden communal table downstairs, or the Guilvinec, an upscale restaurant with old wine casks decorating the walls. In the spirit of Bercy’s origins, there are three wine bars: La Vinea Café, with Jazz Brunches every Sunday, the Nicolas Wine Bar and Boutique with two terraces and wine tasting by the glass, and the trendy Chai 33, with a lounge bar, boutique, and restaurant where your waiter takes you to the cave to select your wine. For a bit of diversion the Bercy Village UGC Cinema shows the latest films in their original version (VO) on large screens, or sports fans can catch livematches on satellite television at the Frog Pub & Brewery. For something a bit different, cross over the Pont Tolbiac to the floating clubs moored on the Seine at Quai François Mauriac, including the popular bright red Batofar, with its distinctive lighthouse, and the Guinguette des Pirates, an old Chinese junk barge transformed into a pirate ship. Both have regular nightly DJs and live music, with happy hours in the early evening on the weekends.
Heather Stimmler-Hall is an American travel writer living in France since 1995. She’s the author of the Paris & Ile-de-France Adventure Guide (Hunter Publishing, 2004) and editor of the Secrets of Paris Newsletter. To sign up for the newsletter, visit www.secretsofparis.com.
Heather provides custom, private tours of Paris neighborhoods to help familiarize visitors with city’s central tourist districts and charming historic quarters as well as up-and-coming areas and quiet residential neighborhoods off the beaten path.
For inquiries, email her at heather@secretsofparis.com.
