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Leave the Hôtel de Ville metro station onto rue de Rivoli and turn right onto rue St-Martin. St-Merry will be on your right after rue de la Verrerie. This was the parish church of the wealthy Lombard bankers, who gave their name to the nearby rue des Lombards. Built on the site of a church that dates back to the 7th century, it is named after St Médéric, the Abbot of St-Martin d’Autun, who was buried here in the early 8th century. The saint’s name was eventually simplified to Merry.
This flamboyant Gothic building was not completed until 1552 and its west front is particularly decorative. The church’s northwest turret contains the oldest bell in Paris, dating from 1331, while its pulpit, designed by the Stodtz brothers in the mid-18th century, sports a rather incongruous pair of carved wooden palm trees.
Continue along rue St-Martin and you will come to Café Beaubourg on your right. Facing onto the large piazza in front of the Pompidou Centre, this popular and stylish café was designed by Christian de Portzamparc. Created for restaurateur Gilbert Costes in 1987, its spacious terraces overlook the vast piazza in front of the Pompidou Centre as well as the smaller square across rue St-Martin. The café’s double-height interior is also spacious and very elegant, it has been decorated in an understated style that is so classic and timeless that it doesn’t appear to have dated at all. A popular meeting place for art dealers from the surrounding galleries, as well as Pompidou Centre staff, it serves excellent light meals and is a popular place to have a drink.
St-Merry
Opening times: 3–7pm daily
Tel: 01. 42 71 93 93
Café Beaubourg
Opening times: 8am–1am Mon–Wed, Sun; 8am–2am Thur–Sat
Tel: 01. 48 87 63 96
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This is Paris’ museum of modern art. It is also home to extensive reference libraries, an industrial design centre, a centre for music and acoustic research as well as administrative facilities, bookshops, restaurants, a cinema and children’s activities. The building itself is perhaps even more famous than the art it contains. Designed by Italian architects Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano and Gianfranco Franchini (Peter Rice was the engineer), it completely revolutionised this part of Paris. It was also a huge influence on the course of late 20th-century architectural development. The result of a design competition, which the architects only decided to enter at the last moment, the building is influenced by Futurism, Constructivism and the Archigram collective. It was
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