Arrondissements 3, 4
Numbers: 14-16, 25, 43, 50, 60, 61
The road gets its name from the alms houses for the respectable poor whose income was too low to pay taxes – the ‘road of the well-to-do who were too poor to pay taxes’. They were built where Nos. 32 to 36 are today, probably in the 17th century. Before then it was called the road of old pulleys (Rue des Viez-Poullies). Part of the road was renamed the Rue des Francs-Citoyens during the French Revolution.
The road still shows off several of Paris’ oldest buildings and now separates the third and fourth arrondissements. At Nos. 14-18 you find the Carnavalet Museum of Paris’ historical collections the museum’s official address is at No. 23 Rue de Sévigné.
No. 25 is the best-preserved huge aristocrats’ town house, the Hôtel de Lamoignon. It is now a public library of the history of Paris, and its garden, first opened to the public in 1969, was renamed on September 25 2018, my life-long friend Rich Clarke points out, the Jardin de l’Hôtel-Lamoignon – Mark-Ashton.
Most of Ashton’s admirers overlook his strong Communist beliefs and his being active in Red Wedge and then becoming virtually the last General Secretary of the British Young Communist League in 1985.
The street displays vestiges of the Philippe August wall at Nos. 31-33 and No. 57 and several other grand town houses.
On May 12 1839 what was then the Town Hall of the 7th arrondissement at No. 43 was caputred by the Society of Seasons insurrectionaries. Barbès, Blanqui, Martin Bernard and Albert Laponneraye are all linked to its seizure.
When the SFIO and then PCF theoretician Charles Rappoport first arrived in Paris from Russia in 1895 he lived at No. 50.
The magnificent private mansion built on the site of the Hôtel de Guise at No. 60 was known as the Hotel de Soubise. It became the National Archives in 1794 and was saved from being burnt down by shell fire from the Versaillais troops attacking the barricade at No. 61, and by the 125th battalion of the National Guard of the on May 25 1781 by Louis-Guillaume Debock and André Alavoine. They were later pardoned for their support of the Commune because of their actions that day.
While he was studying at the Lycee Charlemagne in the 1880s, Leon Blum lived as a boarder in the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois.
