Places like Paris evoke thoughts, expectations, memories and more. There’s a lot of history to absorb, some of which I have heard from the English point of view and thus not always exactly factual! And that phrase, “We’ll always have Paris …”

Well, we nearly didn’t, and it was the act of a selfless German general towards the end of WWII in defying orders that meant that we have the Paris of today instead of a reconstructed city after it was to have been destroyed.

There has been massive destruction in Paris in the past, Napoleon III’s Prefect Baron Haussmann cut vast swathes through the old Paris to create the boulevards of today, thousands of people were displaced and history was lost. Most visitors today appreciate the work without realising it had been done, and not so long ago at that. Much of the work took place between 1853 and 1870 although some of it was not finished until the 1920s.

I’d previously stayed in the Goutte d’Or, round the back of Paris Nord, a warren of small streets drowning in history, in a small apartment three floors up in the rue Myrha. There had been barricades on rue Myrha during the defence of the world’s first workers’ government, the Paris Commune of 1871.

This time I found a small hotel in the 11th arrondissement, not too far from Place de la Bastille, and the Pere Lachaise cemetery, where the Communards made their last stand against Napoleon’s forces. My sisters were in a hotel up towards Montmartre, well placed for more regular tourist activities, and on the bus routes. Montmatre also has a link with the Commune, their guns, which had been bought by public subscription, were situated at Montmatre and at Belleville, two areas of higher ground in the Paris area.

To a casual visitor none of this is apparent, but a little reading of history brings many subjects back to life, particulary in the older areas.

Drowning in history indeed …