La Rotonde de la Villette

This is not the first time (see previous post) I talk about this building, “La Rotonde de la Villette”, but after a long period of restoration it has recently opened to public. There is a restaurant and a bar and different facilities can be rented for meetings, expositions, cultural events …

The building was part of the toll barrier built in the 1780’s, just before the Revolution, “The Wall of the Farmers General”, which surrounded what then was Paris. Tax had to be paid for goods entering the city. A number of bars and restaurants (“guinguettes”) could be found just outside the wall, with “tax-free” prices. The unpopular taxes were abolished during the Revolutionary years, but rather soon again resumed. In 1860 it was decided that the surrounding villages – Belleville, Montmartre, Batignolles, Passy… (see map) should be incorporated and the wall disappeared. However, the payment of tolls remained until 1943, but the collect was displaced to the new Paris borders.

Until 1860, the toll had to be paid in some 60 buildings, part of the “Wall of the Farmers General”. Only four remain, Place de la Nation (“Barrière du Trone” – actually two buildings, see previous post), Place Denfert-Rochereau (« Barrière d’Enfer », also two buildings, see previous post), Parc Monceau (« Barrière de Chartres », see previous post) and this one, situated where the Canal Saint Martin and the Bassin de la Villette meet (« La Rotonde de la Villette », also referred to as « Barrière de Saint Martin »).  (See previous posts about the Bassin and the Canal.)

“La Rotonde” became later a home for the municipal guard and even later – until 1921 – a salt warehouse, and then, until quite recently, it housed some municipal administrations.

What time is it? .... and more

One of the several walls that during centuries were built around Paris was called the Wall of the Farmers-General (see previous post about Paris walls). This one was built not for defence purposes, but for tax collecting, payment of tolls for goods entering Paris. The name “tax farmers” had its origins from the Romans, tax collectors for a specific area. (St. Mathew was one of them, in Capernaum).

This wall started to be built in 1784 just before the Revolution and was probably a major factor for the 1789 revolutionary movements. The tax collection was stopped in 1791, but was resumed in 1798 and abandoned only in 1860, when also the villages outside the wall like Montmartre, Belleville, Batignolles... were incorporated.

There were 62 toll barriers or lodges and if the wall has disappeared and been replaced by large avenues and boulevards, a few of these lodges remain, now – fortunately - with different uses; one at Parc Monceau (see previous post), one at Place de Stalingrad / La Villette (see previous post) and two at Place de la Nation (previously “du Trône”) (see previous post).

My preceding post was about the Catacombs. One of the lodges, at Place Denfert-Rochereau, is where you enter the Catacombs.

On the opposite side of the street there is a “sister lodge”, today occupied by some Paris administrative offices. Under this building is where the French Resistance had their secret headquarters during the last phase leading to the Nazi capitulation of Paris in August 1944. The street between the two buildings has now got the name of Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, a manual worker and communist, active in the International Brigades in Spain 1937-38 and later commanding the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) in the Paris region (Ile-de-France). He directed the Paris strikes and uprising the fortnight before he, together with General Leclerc, could co-sign the surrender of General von Choltitz, August 25, 1944.

One curious thing can be seen outside this building: A clock with the inscription “VILLE de PARIS – Unification de l’Heure – Centre Horaire” (see top picture). This should thus be (has been) the Paris centre for the “coordination of the hour”; obviously not today in activity: The clock was working but indicated 5:45 (or 17:45) when the real hour was 12:56! I have tried to find some information about this coordination centre, but in vain. Well, today we have the atomic Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Did you know that because of the slowing globe rotation, leap seconds have to be added today approximately every 500 days and in a century probably every 250 days?