Belleville is still one of those neighborhoods in Paris where you can feel “at home”, where people talk to each other, where you won’t feel alone even in the middle of a crowd.
It is the heart of the popular Paris, the one sung of by Edith Piaf and Charles Trénet. Close to the cemetery of the “Père-Lachaise” where, when walking through the alleys, you feel the presence of History, meet with the tombs of many great french artists like Proust, Yves Montand, Balzac, of course Edith Piaf but also some strangers like Oscar Wilde, Chopin, Max Ernst or Jim Morrison….
Today I am not sure if a person walking in Belleville would run into “Gavroche”, the famous character of “Les Misérables”, by Victor Hugo. Surely he would run into one of the many new inhabitants of Belleville, immigrants from Africa, the Middle-East or Asia. Belleville has become a place of universality, but I feel that there, in this neighborhood, tolerance and dialogue are stronger than fear and separation.
People learn to live together, and they have proved being able to do so along History, at least in some preserved places as Belleville…. the many tombs of the Père-Lachaise are here to remind us that in death, we can peacefully rest all together, one alongside the other. Let’s prove that we don’t need to wait for death in order to achieve this goal.
