Paris, always Paris… the images captured are often the result of what the unconscious or our knowledge and life experiences suggest to us, our memory acting as an hard drive. I thought that even the most cunning Mobsters would put an end to this dummy thrown away and forgotten among the trash of society. The Passage d’Enfer parallel to rue Campagne Première transports me into the circles of hell of Dante’s Divine Comedy but at the same time into the sublime cultural richness of the Roaring Twenties of Montparnasse. The Orthodox church on Avenue Rapp with the Eiffel Tower in the background cannot make us forget the conflict in Ukraine and the clash of civilizations in progress and in the making. A man and a child in front of the Town Hall of the 3rd district may not know that they have just walked on the former site of the Temple dungeon where Louis XVI and the royal family were imprisoned from August 13, 1792. And again the rue de Bretagne, Dupetit-Thouars with the snow and the Temple above all are the places which testified almost 800 years ago to the fascinating mysteries of the Templars. In my walks between Montparnasse and the Marais I now like to remember the view “over Louvre” from the Pont Neuf overlooking the Quai de Conti where the Seine bifurcates around the Île de la Cité, of a teenager running on the tracks on banks in gloomy weather. And I still see rue Étienne Marcel, rue du Roi Doré, ruelle de Beauce, rue des Archives in the gloomy times of Covid. I then continue beyond the Haut Marais, I take a break on a bench at the Place de la République, I wait for friends on the Arletty footbridge for an evening at the Canal Saint-Martin close to the “atmosphere” of the Hotel du Nord.
Giorgio Messieri
