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A DAY OUT: PARIS

In Paris, the Rue des Martyrs Is a Slice of Village Life

Correction Appended

SUNDAY in Paris and nowhere to go. Much of the city shut tight.

So how to satisfy that craving for comfort that is particularly acute if one is not staying in a suite at the Ritz but in one of those functional, undersize rooms for which Paris is famous? How also to satisfy that perennial desire for discovery, particularly if the city is familiar?

Sure, there's the Marais -- but every other tourist in Paris is already there.

Instead, head over to the Rue des Martyrs, just northeast of the Galeries Lafayette department store and southwest of the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur at Montmartre. This half-mile street, mostly uphill, is the spine of a neighborhood that offers magic in a compressed time and space.

It was the martyrdom of Saint Denis in the fifth century for preaching the Christian Gospel that gave the street its name. According to legend, Saint Denis miraculously picked up his head after he was beheaded and walked for miles before dying.

During the Renaissance, the site of his beheading, on what is now the Rue Yvonne Le Tac, became a place of pilgrimage. In 1534, Ignatius Loyola and his companions came to pay homage and took vows that led to the creation of the Jesuit order. (The tiny chapel dedicated to Saint Denis, and rebuilt in the 19th century, can be visited on Friday afternoons and on Sundays by appointment.)

The Rue des Martyrs starts at the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Church and ends near the Place des Abbesses. The busy Boulevard de Rochechouart slices the street in two at the Pigalle Métro, and divides it between the 9th and the 18th Arrondissements. Both parts blend the coziness of a village frozen in time and the vitality of a neighborhood described as "bobo," or bourgeois bohemian.

The lower part of the street seems more bourgeois, because so many young, upwardly mobile families have moved in here on the heels of the artists, filmmakers and writers who came years ago. It is closed to cars, but not bicycles or baby strollers, on Sunday between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., making its specialty food and flower shops, boutiques and restaurants easy to navigate. The upper part, with its cabarets and clubs and proximity to the still somewhat seedy Pigalle, retains a distinctly bohemian feel.

All along the way are delightful visual detours: a private gated courtyard at Cité Malsherbes, with its enameled terra cotta at No.11, where the 19th-century painter Jules Jollivet lived; the tranquil, tree-lined Place Charles Dullin; the steep staircase at the end of the Rue Chappe.

Some shops on the Rue des Martyrs, like Boucherie Billebault, a popular butcher shop, have been operated by the same families for more than a century. A used-clothing store at the base of the street sells slightly shabby men's vintage tweed overcoats for $20; an antique jewelry store up the road offers Art Deco diamond-encrusted rings for thousands of dollars.

What is just as appealing as the contrast in this neighborhood is the intimacy. This is a small, easily maneuverable area where people still greet each other on the street and merchants look out for their own.

Tito Galli, an Italian who owns Chez Tito, a small but intimate Italian food store and eatery hidden on the Rue Hippolyte Lebas, hangs the works of struggling neighborhood artists and photographers. For the closing day of a recent exhibition at L'Oeil du Huit, an art gallery around the corner, Mr. Galli donated the Italian pastries and espresso.

The art gallery, which was once a printing shop, runs an artist's atelier out of a glass-roofed back room, with art classes for schoolchildren and free space for painters who don't have their own studios.

"I lived for 30 years in the 16th, which was a first-class tomb where I didn't know any of my neighbors," said Frank Caradec, a resident of the Rue des Martyrs neighborhood, referring to the large, conservative, wealthy area where many business executives and diplomats live. "Now I live among painters and musicians and children."

While the Rue des Martyrs and the surrounding streets are peppered with restaurants, my favorite on Sundays is Rose Bakery, a homey bakery with a laid-back feel (and laid-back service). Go early. There can be a long line out onto the street.

Rose Carrarini, an Englishwoman, and her French husband, Jean-Charles, use largely organic ingredients and serve up American-style pancakes and homemade scones, carrot cake, shortbread crumbles, pizzas and quiches and orange marmalade, and a wide selection of teas from around the world. In January, they opened City Organic, an organic food store featuring teas, soaps and other products from England, on the nearby Rue Milton.

An anchor near the other end of the Rue des Martyrs is Le Progrès on the Rue des Trois Frères, a bar and brasserie where customers park their baby strollers at the entrance. There's beer on tap, simple fare like warm kippers and grilled lamb chops and upscale drinks like caipirinhas and black Russians. Close by is the Place des Abbesses, with its Belle Époque Hector Guimard Métro station.

For shoppers, the Rue des Martyrs offers delightful secondhand shops. Et Puis C'est Tout has a vast collection of advertising crockery and glassware -- pitchers, ashtrays, coffee mugs, carafes, as well as odd bits of furniture. L'Objet Qui Parle is a hole-in-the-wall of a brocante -- a cross between an antique shop and junk store -- with real finds, especially in provincial pottery and stemware, most from northeastern France. There are even stuffed pheasants and ducks.

For those who love to linger in bookstores, there is L'Oeil du Silence at No.91, with its old patterned tile floor, wooden tables piled with books and Betty Boop and Betty Grable pinups. It boasts a collection of first editions on art and film, books on the Paris Commune, CD's of experimental music and vintage record albums.

The Librairie des Abbesses on the Rue Yvonne Le Tac is lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases trimmed in red and gold. Its owner, Marie Rose Guarnieri, is a fierce neighborhood booster and a regular on a literary program on the Paris Premiere cable TV channel, opining not only on books but also all things intellectual.

This is not a part of Paris where many Americans choose to stay. But there are a handful of decent, even charming hotels. The best among them are the Hôtel Lorette, Hôtel Lamartine (the Romantic poet Alphonse Lamartine lived there briefly) and the Hôtel France Albion. For visitors who prefer to search for the crustiest baguette and perfect melon and cook for themselves, there is no better place to rent an apartment and to pretend, even for a brief time, to live in Paris.

A DAY OUT: PARIS Correction: April 3, 2005, Sunday An capsule guide on Feb. 27 with an article about the Rue des Martyrs in Paris misstated the hours for Rose Bakery. It is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., not 9 to 7. As the related article said, it is also open on Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 5, Page 13 of the National edition with the headline: A DAY OUT: PARIS; In Paris, the Rue des Martyrs Is a Slice of Village Life. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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