About Inspiré par Hillairet

View from the stairs of the Panthéon

As a child, whenever my mother would take me on a trip, she would stop and say, "Imagine X was standing here, right where we are now."  And those words always struck me, whether we were at home or in a faraway land.  And I still repeat those words to myself every day as I walk through my adopted home, Paris.

Paris is captivating enough when you take it at face value, but I always wanted to know more about the every day streets and what happened on them.  My searches to learn more about them all led to one name, Jacques Hillairet, and his grand oeuvre, the Dictionnaire Historique des Rues de Paris.  An encyclopedia of each street, and some history to go with it, this tome was exactly what I craved. My yellowed edition is the cradle of this site, the birthplace of my exploration of the streets we can walk today, starting with the origins of the streets in the past.

I owe a debt to these two sites, that provide lovely content and helpful links and maps.  

http://www.linternaute.com/sortir/rue-paris

http://www.parisrues.com/

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