It has always appealed to exiles of all kinds, the rich, the poor, the famous, the foreign, the talented, or just the plain eccentric: Racine, Corot, Gide, Proust, Cyril Connolly, Hemingway, President Pompidou, to name some of its best-known inhabitants. Today it is a millionaire’s quartier, but it also contains crumbling top-floor studios like mine, which explains the curiously mixed and shifting nature of the island’s population. The Ile St Louis, connected to the Notre Dame end of the Ile de la Cité by a footbridge, is still a place apart. Were we not in Paris, then? Apparently not. The little general store informed me that the kind of light-bulb I wanted could only be obtained dans Paris.
The flower on capital island free#
The fishmonger offered free delivery, but there was a small charge for delivery sur le continent, and this was not a joke. I came to live on the Ile St Louis in 1992 and soon discovered that the shops kept unusual hours, closing for lunch from 1 to 4 pm. When I first read those words, I felt a shock of recognition. ‘There is an island in Paris…the inhabitants of which are quite separate from the rest of the city, they dine at a different hour, their manners are different and they talk of crossing the bridge as the ancients talking of crossing the Hellespont’ – Charlotte Edgeworth in a letter to her brother, 16 December 1802 Annabel Simms revels in its distinct culture Bang in the middle of Paris, the Ile St Louis is almost its own country.
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