Manual to be a good romantic in Paris
BarcelonaThe 2024 Paris Olympics allowed the French to boost their self-esteem. The people of Paris even more so. And they usually have it high enough, right? It also helped new generations recover old hymns, likeHymn in love of Édith Piaf. For many years, the singer was the city's best ambassador, although recently fewer and fewer tourists remember her; they now have new role models. That's what they told me at the small museum dedicated to Piaf, in the neighborhood where she was born, Belleville.
With the Paris Games, things changed for the better. Generally, tourists don't tend to go to Belleville, a neighborhood traditionally with a bad reputation. It's like the Raval neighborhood in Barcelona, which has been associated with problems for over a century. But as is also the case in the Raval neighborhood, Belleville hides treasures and lively streets. Also a square named after its most famous neighbor.
Piaf was born here, where Bernard Marchois, an admirer, opened this museum at 5 Rue Crespin du Gast. It's a beautiful place to visit. You do need to call ahead to make an appointment, though. The neighborhood has changed. If Portuguese and Italian immigrants arrived when the singer was born, now it's Senegalese and Indians who open restaurants and hair salons. You can walk from the museum to 72 Rue de Belleville, where Edith Giovanna Gassion was born to a modest family of circus performers. A plaque commemorates her: "On the steps of this house, Edith Piaf, whose voice would change the world, was born on December 19, 1915, in absolute poverty." According to legend, her father got drunk to celebrate her premature birth, and her mother, Annetta Maillard, gave birth alone in the doorway of her house. In truth, she arrived at the neighborhood hospital, but without her father, who taught his daughter a great deal. Specifically, the ones you shouldn't do to be a good husband or father.
For being a good romantic "comme il faut" you can go listening to theHymn in love visiting the places that changed her life, like the corner of Troyon Street and the elegant Avenue Mac-Mahon, near the Arc de Triomphe, where businessman Louis Leplée discovered her singing with a hat on the ground to collect coins. Or the mansion at number 7 Leconte-de-Lisle, where she went to live with her great love, the boxer Marcel Cerdan, to whom she dedicated her hymn to love, which she would sing with tears in her eyes when Cerdan lost his life in a plane crash.
It's heartbreaking to read about her life. That small body that didn't reach a meter and a half was beating with a broken heart. And only those who have suffered know how beautiful reciprocated love can be. Few people have sung about love with such heart. So be romantic and go to the Pére Lachaise Cemetery. Buy flowers and leave them on her grave, well marked on the maps, where you can read a piece of her hymn to love: "Dios réunit ceux qui'iment". May God bring together those who love each other. Amen.
Recommendation for traveling to Paris
Song: Hymn in love
Author: Edith Piaf
Year: 1949
