An Unexplored Side of Paris

If you’re tired of the Eiffel Tower which you’ve already seen in the morning, in the late evening, in the snow and in the rain and other mainstream sights preventing you from realizing what the essence of Paris is, follow me to Rue Las-Cases to taste the freedom. Oh, forget about Notre-Dame Cathedral crowded with tourists, we head for Basilique Sainte Clotilde, I assure you’ll enjoy it not less than Sacre-Coeur Basilique.
If you are lucky enough as I was you’ll find there several boys performing tricks on their skateboards on the square in front of Basilique Sainte Clotilde. Wherever you are authorities usually build sports grounds for young skateboarders to isolate them from the rest of the world but in Paris your organic sports ground will be the square in front of Basilique Sainte Clotilde embodying unity of old generation – which symbolizes an old basilica with its sharp steeples desiring for the sky - and new one, presented by young boys wearing jeans and T-shirts. Old and new bloods are destined to meet under blue Parisian sky to blend and become a part of each other – here on Rue Las-Cases you’ll taste not only the freedom but also the French history.
No matter how much you try you won’t manage to find any genuine Parisian who has something against these young skateboarders or denies that architecture forms our perception of the world.
Paris is the citadel of freedom and it’s simply one more illustration of this thesis. It’s mistaken to be considered skateboarding near the Basilica as something extra-ordinary as in fact it’s a normal occurrence for the French capital. In Paris beauty of this city will penetrate into your soul inevitably, no matter you hide from the rain at some café drinking hot coffee with a crispy croissant, walk along Seine or simply look carefully over astonishing buildings with decorative balconies standing in the street which was unfamiliar to you still two minutes ago.
Do you want your child to become an aesthete? Buy a skateboard for him and let him join these Parisian boys on Rue Las-Cases. After the skateboard training they’ll probably go to an organ concert music at Basilique Sainte Clotilde – this is the way how young people become aesthetes.
I was charmed by the scene I described above, it looked like boys found skateboarding against Basilica background very natural. Probably the same way boys playing football on the Arene de Lutece feel – but about them I’ll tell my readers next time.