Plans de Paris

On one of the internet forums I follow, another participant is looking for a Plan de Paris par Arrondissement like the one he bought in Paris back in the late 1970s. These are the standard Paris street atlases, with an alphabetical list of every street in the city, separate maps of each of the 20 arrondissements (districts), and at least one map of the métro, the subway system.

I looked on my book shelves and turned up this map, which I must have bought in Paris in 1973. On the title page I find this notice: Dépôt légal 1er trimestre 1973.

Published by Editions L'Indispensable in Paris

I say I must have bought it then because in the front of the book, in my handwriting, is the address of the apartment where I lived during the 1972-73 school year. That was the year I worked in Rouen as an English-language assistant in the Lycée Corneille. I wouldn't have written my Rouen address in it if I hadn't owned it when I lived there.

I also found this book on the shelf. I can't find any mention of a year of publication in it.

My copy of the Leconte book has a broken spine
and the arrondissement maps are falling out

I assume I bought the Leconte Plan de Paris in 1974, when I returned to France. My job that year was helping to run an American year-abroad program in Paris.

The format of both of these little Plan de Paris books is about 3½" x 5½". I think each came with a large fold-out map of Paris glued to the inside back cover, but those maps are long gone out of my copies. I actually have a third Plan de Paris, another Indispensable, with the date 1978 in it. It's hard to believe that even that on is nearly 30 years old.

OK, I confess. I also have three more, one purchased in the early 1990s and two I've bought since I moved to France in 2003.

Here's what the Leconte métro map looked like in the mid-70s:

Click on the map to see an enlargement of the image