In less than 15 years, the public debt of the Paris municipality went from zero euros, under the mayorship of Bertrand Delanoit, to more than 7.7 billion euros today, under mayoress Anne Hidalgo. Hidalgo recently sought a rare legal step called tutelle, equivalent to financial guardianship, claiming she could no longer protect Paris.
Hidalgo is the first woman to be elected mayor of Paris, she is 63 years old, was born in Spain to an immigrant family and is the mayor of the most beautiful city in the world, after being elected in April 2014.
Even though her worldview as mayor advocates “genorista”, that is, architectural, ecological and non-polluting urban generosity, it is evident that the structural changes that Hidalgo made in the city mainly hurt her. She invested millions of euros in renovating Republic Square, turning it from a tree-filled square into a slippery concrete block that endangers pedestrians. She fenced the remaining trees with concrete instead of the hammered, stylish and accepted iron mesh until it arrived.
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Hidalgo shaved the trees off the streets, removed the cafe terraces, on which you could sit and drink while looking slowly at the street, and today stands at the head of a city that is not clean, to say the least.
It is not surprising, then, that protest movements arose against her – starting with the social brush under the hashtag #SaccageParis (rampant in Paris) to demonstrations that included people who also came from outside the French capital to protest what the mayor is doing to the urban complex.
Last week I visited Paris, where I lived as a student and journalist for a decade. There is no doubt that Hidalgo was not able to completely damage the beauty of the city, but its influence is evident in it. While I was enjoying my beloved city, Hidalgo filed a complaint against Gabriel Atal, the Minister of Public Accounts, who accused Hidalgo live on the radio of Hidalgo’s approach as following a “completely illusory method” and managing the city according to a pyramid scheme, a kind of “Ponzi scheme”, a platform that he established in 2015 under the presidency of François Hollande.
Paris. Pont Royal HotelAccording to Atal, Hidalgo is putting Paris in huge debt, when it does not make sure to collect rents on time and thus creates a bottomless financial pit. “The reality is that Paris has rent debts of more than a billion euros despite its large debts.” The politicians started going wild. Some defended Hidalgo on the grounds that it is impossible to compare a mayor who operates according to an approved budget to one who advocates illegal economic activity. Hidalgo, as mentioned, did not remain liable and filed a defamation complaint with a request to stop harassing her.
There is no doubt that the relationship between the government and the municipality of Paris has deteriorated, since the announcement a dramatic increase in the residence tax in the city has been skipped. The municipality defended this increase due to a budgetary diet that the state is making for Paris and to preserve the ability to fight global warming. But the French in the streets, including my friends who live in the city, are not satisfied. They want the Paris of old, the clean, ancient and traditional one that you can cuddle up to.
The only beneficiary is a guest for the moment – the non-resident who pays taxes. And for the Israeli tourist, this too is not thanks to the skipping, but due to the low exchange rate of the Euro, which made Paris accessible, provided of course they know where to go.
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Many Parisians died of the life they had become dear to them in Paris. An average of 10,000 Parisians leave Paris every year, and the rest disguise themselves as tourists in their city: they usually ask for cozy corners that were not affected by the transformation of the Hidalgo.
Such a cute corner can be found in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area, a stronghold of the intellectuals, writers and philosophers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friends who used to frequent the cafes in the area.
It is obvious that Hidalgo does not dare to hit this specific point on the map of Paris. If she entered the decade-long renovation of the Forum Le Haul shopping center in the first arrondissement, there is no way she would dare to touch the bourgeois and ultimate Parisian bastion of the seventh arrondissement.
Another “survivor” is found above the legendary restaurant L’Atelier of the late chef Joel Robuchon, in the form of the Pont Royal Hotel, named after the bridge that connects the rest of the street with the Louvre Palace. An old Parisian building, two steps from the designer shops of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Musée d’Orsay, Cafe de Fleur, and the restaurant Les Antiquaires, named after the antique dealers who still operate in the area.
Pont Royal Hotel, Paris (Photo: Yeh’ach, Pont Royal)Hidalgo also did not touch the small business owners in the place, such as cobblers, butchers, stationery stores and chocolate and candied fruit boutiques. The rent in this area is indeed skyrocketing, but it is evident that these are the last signs of the beautiful and good Paris.
Thanks to the low exchange rate of the euro these days, the five-star hotel Pont Royal becomes economically reasonable, at a price of about 370 euros per room per night for a family, including breakfast. This is an excellent way to experience the intellectual life of the Left Bank. Shopping enthusiasts will surely find interest in the Bon marché department store, which was once famous for its outrageous prices and has now become definitely financially accessible, without forgetting the “consumer” close to it. It is actually a massive supermarket where you can find food types from almost anywhere in the world.
Pont Royal Hotel, Paris (Photo: Yeh’ach, Pont Royal)Drink with Hemingway
The Pont Royal Hotel was built as a residence in 1750 and the writer Chateaubriand lived there. In 1815 it became a hotel. His bar is the first cocktail bar to open in Paris between two world wars, and it celebrates 100 years this year. At that time the idea of mixing two or more types of alcohol was considered strange, but the Parisians were actually enthusiastic.
Those who encouraged them were Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, as well as the American Ernest Hemingway, the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, the French sculptor Edgar Degas, and also the Spanish painters Pablo Picasso, who was already well-known, and a young artist named Salvador Dali, who had just started his career in Paris.
Pont Royal Hotel, Paris (Photo: Yeh’ach, Pont Royal)And not only artists, but also American tourists who suffered from the dry period in the USA came to quench their thirst at this cocktail bar and hear the famous jazz music that was celebrated in Paris at that time. In memory of those performances, live jazz performances are held in the cocktail bar every week and return to the 20s of the last century.
The hotel has changed hands several times since the 1990s. In this framework, it was properly renovated, and this year it was purchased by the Champagne Hospitality group, which owns a portfolio of luxury hotels in France, mainly in Champagne and Burgundy, as well as in the Caribbean islands. The Pont Royal Hotel is the first in the collection and currently also the only one located in Paris.
The hotel’s official restaurant is, as mentioned, the atelier founded by Robuchon. It is not possible to enter freely, since there are no external handles to open the door. That means only those who are worthy in the eyes of the concierge will get to see the door opened in their honor and have dinner there.
Pont Royal Hotel, Paris (Photo: Yeh’ach, Pont Royal)Breakfast at Pont Royal is served in front of a relaxing Japanese garden and includes all the best that France has to offer in terms of its more or less smelly cheeses, aged sausages, butters, marmalades and jams, salts, breads baked on site, such as the delicious croissants with their different flavors, and the varied omelets that you can choose .
The Champagne Hospitality luxury group pays attention to the small details. A bottle of champagne and chocolate from the prestigious boutique Maison du Chocolat await each guest in the room. Since they knew we were coming from Israel, they left kosher wine and a box of macaron cookies in different flavors from a kosher and luxury bakery in Paris in our rooms. The view of the rooftops of Paris under the auspices of the Eiffel Tower, which wins over everything, is stunning, and for a moment Hidalgo’s Paris is forgotten.
To complete the Paris experience of yesteryear, you can choose one of the many companies that offer CV2 tours in a collector’s Citroen car. Even Airbnb (which Hidalgo is constantly fighting, arguing that they are not allowed to rent the apartments for more than 120 days a year) offer these tours, which allow up to three people and a car to discover the point of view of the drivers who drove in Paris a century ago.
A collector’s car in Paris (photo: Yeh’ach, Pont Royal)These tours offer on a platter the classic Paris or the one that Parisians yearn for, a Paris of narrow alleys, passages hidden from view that only a few people know about, inner courtyards, untouristy cafes, selected bakeries and a great deal of Paris that the mayor’s chest of drawers has not yet achieved