Paris: A City Fashioned By Its Past While Beckoning Us With Its Present
By: Alexis Mckenney
Tags: Culture, History, Dreams, Paris, Travel

Like anyone who has traveled to Paris, for my first visit I planned to take a river cruise down the Seine. I romanticized sipping on wine while viewing historic buildings, such as Notre Dame while, of course, taking in the City’s lights.

I have never lost my love for the sites that draw millions of tourists each year. After losing myself in Paris many times over, I eventually found that what draws me back time after time is the connection I feel to what I see today because of its connection the past.

Whether it’s your first, second, or tenth trip to Paris, understanding that the past connects you to the present allows for an enriching, even emotional experience. When you come to understand that you are walking the same streets as those who did the same many years, even centuries, before you, you start to feel as though you tapped into a part of your imagination that may well rival that of the best of writers who use Paris as inspiration.

That seminal moment came for me when I stood alone on a street on the left bank and stared down at a medallion embedded in a sidewalk. As cliché as this might sound, it felt as though I had been there before.

“A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.”

— Thomas Jefferson

The history of Paris is one of constant change. The buildings and history have, for the most part, withstood the test of time. Countless wars have been fought on its soil. The entire city was redesigned by Georges-Eugène Huassmann between 1853 and 1870. Commissioned by Napoléon III, Haussmann leveled medieval neighborhoods and built six miles of wide boulevards that are easily identified on the maps we use while exploring Paris from the top of a double decker bus.

Not long ago I learned that the Seine is not the only river in Paris. The second river, the Bièvre, flows through neighborhoods on the left bank and empties into the Seine. You might wonder why you never heard of it or saw it while touring the city. That is because of how it was used. For many years, the Bièvre fed mills and tanneries, which resulted in pollution and disease. By 1912 it was completely covered up, but not completely lost.

When I started looking down in the area that marks where the river once flowed in plain sight, I found the sidewalk medallions that mark its course. I proceeded to follow these medallions and street art that discreetly includes arrows pointing me in the direction that the river still flows today, only now below the surface.

While the river might be hidden, it was in that moment that a different Paris was becoming visible to me. It was then that my focus shifted to the people who live there today, as well as those who lived there years past. I started exploring little known buildings and passages. I immersed myself in learning about the cataphiles who access miles of passageways that exist below the city. My imagination started to grow the way it did when I watched Midnight in Paris for the first time.

“Down in the metro I feel the world start to multiply.”

— Jimmy Buffett

Paris Metro, Hotel De Ville

Hardly a day passes when I do not feel the draw of Paris. I want to read more about what I find, not simply find what I already read about. For far too long, I was mostly drawn to how I romanticized it. Like Gil in Midnight in Paris, and much to the dismay of many tour guides, I, too, wanted to meet up with Hemingway, Dali, and Picasso, or get whisked away to share wine with Gertrude Stein while we exchanged book ideas. I suppose a part of me still dreams of that.

Wandering without a map, emerging from the metro in areas far from the tourist sites, and simply following sidewalk medallions over a hidden river, caused a shift within me. I started to learn about Paris’ history through the the people I met instead of the books I read. What I didn’t know until then is that by doing so, I would be witnessing how history is made through the choices people make every day. I saw history being made by the doctor from Syria I met who escaped with her daughter to give her a better life. Or, the lawyer from Libya who escaped war to find work and a better life.

When I stay in the Belleville neighborhood at a friend’s flat, I lose myself in wonder thinking about the mustard factory the building housed long ago. When I walk through the neighborhood, I take in the spectacular arrangement of colors worn by people from different African countries. I listen to the stories of Chinese families who came to sell poultry, or sell trinkets at wholesale prices to vendors who sell them to the tourists visiting the Eiffel Tower. I watch mothers, sometimes from the Roma (gypsy) culture, teach their children to beg or steal for survival. In the Marias, I always make time to walk by Jewish schools and synagogues that are protected by soldiers. I still cry when I look up at the plaques placed on walls to serve as reminders of all of the children who were taken from their schools and homes during World War II.

Paris is a place in which we can forget ourselves, reinvent, expunge the dead weight of our past.”

― Michael Simkins



The world is changing and so is Paris. I liken it to how Jimmy Buffett describes Miami. Paris is also a city that is constantly “…smoothing off the rougher edges of the culture clash.” However, it will remain, even if its people and language change over time.

History tells us that nothing stays the same. Cultural shifts remind us that we are really just renting the land and the spaces we inhabit. Maybe visiting other places and spending our money is our way of helping pay the rent, so to speak, of those inhabiting that space at that time.

Paris continues to be a refuge for many, as it sort of is for me. It gives me a temporary respite or sanctuary from my problems. Paris is no different than countless other busy tourist destinations; in that, you take tours, chat with strangers, and take pictures of famous paintings. However, when open to possibilities, it only takes one moment in time to lose yourself in the idea that it is unlike any other place in the world — just like when I stood above a hidden river and for a moment, time stood still.

“…wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

— Ernest Hemingway

A nagging longing to return to Paris is innately understood by those of us who see destinations as more than checking off boxes after visiting the sites we see in the movies. For now, perhaps opportunities to return are limited by time, money, or even a global pandemic. We might turn to books, movies, or even TV shows like the Netflix series, Emily in Paris. Hemingway was right when he said that it goes with us wherever we go. Even knowing that, we know that we must still return. Paris is, after all, a city that beckons the dreamers.