Off the beaten track in Paris
“John, you may have spent 26 years in Paris, but you haven’t seen everything yet”, said Ken. “Let me take you off the beaten track”.
First stop, the last prison, “La Santé Prison”, located inside The Boulevard Périphérique, the ring road around Paris. There are two other prisons in the Paris area, namely Fleury-Mérogis (Europe’s largest prison) and Fresnes, both located in the southern suburbs.
La Santé Prison is located in the east of the Montparnasse district of the 14th arrondissement in southern Paris, at 42 Rue de la Santé. It is one of the most famous prisons in France, with both VIP and maximum security sections.
La Santé Prison has been the site of three escapes, perhaps the most notable being the case of the “helicopter escape”. In 1986, the wife of bank robber Michel Vaujour, Nadine Vajour, studied for months to learn how to fly a helicopter.
Using her newly acquired skills, she rented a white helicopter and flew low over Paris to take her husband from the roof of the prison. Vaujour was later seriously wounded in a shootout with police where he was shot in the head and his wife was arrested.
A large number of French personalities have been interned at La Santé Prison, for example, a former President’s son, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, a Nazi collaborator, Maurice Papon, and a famous businessman, Bernard Tapie
Today, walking around the immense walls of La Santé Prison there is a deathly silence. We saw a few people lined up at a door, presumably waiting to visit loved ones. None of them spoke to each other.
Second stop, a monument to the famous pissoirs of Paris.
A pissoir (also known in French as a vespasienne) is a French invention, common in Europe, that provides a urinal in public space. Pissoirs aimed to reduce urination onto buildings, sidewalks, or streets.
In the spring of 1830, the city government of Paris decided to install the first pissoirs on the major boulevards. The pissoirs reached their peak in the 1930’s when there were about 1,200 throughout Paris but that number quickly shrank to 329 in 1966.
The last remaining pissoir remains as a non-usable pissoir-monument on the boulevard Arago, in front of the La Santé Prison.
Pissoirs were eliminated because neighbours found them unsavoury structures in their neighbourhoods. They have been replaced by more modern public toilets.
Unfortunately, these modern toilets often do not function, are rarely clean, and above all are of insufficient quantity to service Parisians and the millions of tourists who visit. France is not a country of great hygiene.
Bring back the pissoirs I say!
Third stop, the Sainte-Anne Hospital Center is a hospital located in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, specializing in psychiatry, neurology, neurosurgery, neuroimaging and addiction. With its creation dating to 1651, the organization remains, along with the Esquirol Hospital in Saint-Maurice, the symbol of psychiatric asylums in France.
Random visitors like Ken and I are able to walk through this large establishment and enjoy the beautiful architecture and gardens with statues which evoke the challenge of managing mental health.