If Montmartre is the artists' hill that won the marketing battle, Belleville is the artists' hill that kept the artists. It's higher (108 metres at the parc, versus Sacré-Coeur's 130 - close), poorer, more diverse, and less photographed. The same Haussmann-era annexation in 1860 that brought Montmartre into Paris brought Belleville too; in fact the two villages were the only "communes" of the Petite Couronne annexed wholesale rather than in pieces. The same artists who couldn't afford the 9th arrondissement found rents they could pay here. The same political radicalism that ran through Montmartre during the 1871 Commune ran through Belleville too - more violently, in the end. And the same wave of working-class immigration that built 19th-century Montmartre kept building Belleville for the next 160 years.
Annexation, Commune, last barricade
Belleville was a village outside Paris until 1860. Its hill was vineyards (the name belle ville, "beautiful village", comes from the original 14th-century settlement) and gypsum quarries; the slopes were terraced; the lower meadows held workshops. Annexation in 1860 - when Napoleon III's prefect Haussmann brought the suburbs inside the city's new walls - made it the 20th arrondissement's spine. The new working-class population came from Auvergne and Brittany at first, then the Jewish Pale (1880s onwards), then France's North African colonies (1950s-70s), then Wenzhou (1980s onwards). Belleville has been a first-stop neighbourhood for newcomers to Paris for 160 years.
The 1871 Paris Commune - the brief 72-day revolutionary government - had its last battle here. After the Versailles troops broke through the eastern walls on 21 May, the Communards retreated up the hill towards Belleville and Ménilmontant. The "Bloody Week" (Semaine Sanglante, 21-28 May) saw house-to-house fighting through the streets that today carry the prettiest names. The last barricade fell on 28 May on Rue Ramponeau. The next day, 147 surviving Communards were lined up against the wall of Père-Lachaise cemetery (the south-east corner, the Mur des Fédérés) and shot. They were buried in a trench at the foot of the wall. Every Pentecost weekend the French left walks here in a quiet procession; the wall is one of the most loaded political symbols in Paris.
Yiddish Belleville, then Maghreb, then China
From the 1880s, Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Poland - the same wave that filled the Pletzl in the Marais - moved up the hill. By the 1930s Belleville had 25,000 Jewish residents, four synagogues, a Yiddish theatre on Rue Henri Chevreau, and the Yiddish-language daily Pariser Haynt sold on every corner. The 1941-1944 deportations devastated the community. After the war, very little remained.
From the 1950s, France's Tunisian and Algerian colonial workers arrived - first single men in workers' hostels, then families after independence in the early 1960s. By the 1980s Belleville was the most Maghrebi neighbourhood in central Paris. The vendors on Boulevard de Belleville and Rue Ramponeau, the Tunisian fish shops, the Algerian cafés, the Senegalese tailors - all date from this wave. From the 1980s, a community of Chinese-French (mostly from Wenzhou) settled the upper half of Rue de Belleville, around métro Pyrénées and Place des Fêtes. Today this is Paris's second Chinatown (after the 13th's Asian quarter), and it is more recent, smaller, mostly Wenzhou rather than Cantonese, and known for its dim sum and Sichuanese cuisine.
The artists never left
Cheap rent made Belleville the studio quarter of the post-war Paris art world. Robert Doisneau photographed here. Willy Ronis lived and worked here (his 1948 photo of the Place Saint-Médard's Sunday market is a Paris classic). Édith Piaf was born here in 1915 (or near enough - see the legend). The contemporary art world has been here since the 1980s: hundreds of working studios, the Atelier des Boulevards open-house weekend every May, the Association Les Beaux-Arts de Paris workshops, the Le Plateau contemporary art centre (free, in the heart of the parc), and Belleville's own MUR - the rotating outdoor mural at 107 Rue Oberkampf, repainted every two weeks by a different artist since 2003.
Today: gentrification, but slowly
Gentrification is real - the boulangerie next to the parc has been replaced by a vegan deli, the laundrette by a natural-wine bar, the fishmonger by an art gallery. But it's been slower than in the 11th or the Marais. The reason is partly that Belleville is still a working-class neighbourhood with social-housing density that won't disappear: about 30 percent of the 20th arrondissement is HLM (social housing), and the city's policy is to keep it that way. The reason is partly geography - the hill is steep, the public transport is limited to two métro lines, and you can't get a car up most of the side streets. The reason is partly culture: Belleville fights for its character. The Rue Dénoyez wall was rebuilt as social housing but the murals were preserved at the entrance. The MUR is still on Oberkampf. The parc is still free and the view still spectacular. The boulevard market still runs Tuesday and Friday morning at the same time it has for 80 years.
