Saint Martin’s Channel – Hotel International Paris

the Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin’s channels are the two branches of a network devised from the eighteenth century to allow boats to pass through the capital by cutting a loop of the Seine. Decided by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, the construction was completed only in 1825 and 1821. The Canal Saint-Martin, wholly located in Paris, where reigned for a century an incessant traffic and the atmosphere of a neighborhood, failed to disappear in the years 1950-1960 for the benefit of an expressway.

Rehabilitated, it has become, with its axis of a 4.5 km walkthrough the picturesque old Paris’ suburbs, it passes through the fourth, tenth, eleventh and nineteenth  districts. The Channel Saint-Denis has kept him on its industrial way, with deserted quays, warehouses and lined sites of all kinds, evoke the scenery of a “drama movie”.

The Canal Saint-Martin, designed by Louis XIV, was first begun under Napoleon and completed in 1825. It remains one of the most picturesque urban landscape and, paradoxically, one of the least known of Paris. Its banks experienced an intense time. Dozens of barges carrying sand and coal each day. The lock is activated manually.

Today, killed by road transport, the channel sees only two or three barges a day. It connects the pelvis from the Arsenal to the Bassin de la Villette and has nine locks and two swing bridges. He almost disappear again elsewhere, when in the early 70s, the Paris City Council adopted a proposed four-lane highway to cover it. The  president at the time considered him a very favorable.

The mobilization of local residents and the blatant stupidity of the project did not realized that of course. As a result, the Parisians rediscovered the canal, its nine locks, its banks lined with trees, small squares, metal bridges in the Venetian or turning, bodies of water sometimes higher than the road itself, that make up the one of the most romantic landscapes of Paris. The channel has also inspired  many writers including Simenon and Leo Malet in Hast thou seen a corpse?

At the crossroads of Grange aux Belles Vinaigrier is the famous scene of the film by Marcel Carné (Hôtel du Nord) and the gateway to initiate replication when  Arletty now passed on to posterity. For the record, Arletty never set foot on this bridge: the scene was shot in studio sets, it must be said, beautifully restored by Alexandre Trauner (the model is shown at the Museum of Cinema Henri  Langlois, place du Trocadéro).

At the street level of the locks Saint-Martin was the loss of Montfaucon gallows which rocked so crisp and brigands. Villon be escaped twice.

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