The Passage Vendome, built in 1827, was close to my apartment—I accidentally discovered it one day while taking a new way to the Republique Metro. (It was weeks before I figured out I could cut through this little alleyway and get to the Metro much faster!) When built, it made it possible to connect the Temple (more about this below) and a convent created in 1704 for repented girls. It currently contains a shoe-repair and key maker, a language school, a restaurant, an internet café, and doesn’t look like it’s been renovated. It's pretty shabby, actually. (Clefs Tampons, by the way, means "key pads").
The Temple, which today is just a square (a couple blocks from my apartment), was where an ancient fortress was built starting in 1240 by the Knights Templar during Saint Louis’ reign. It later became a prison and was notorious for being the French royal family’s jail at the time of the Revolution. Among others, King Louis XVI was taken from here to be guillotined; Marie Antoinette was taken from here to the Conciergerie (see 2/27/07 blog) from where she was also eventually taken to the guillotine.
As Napoleon ordered, the fortress was destroyed around 1860 because it had become a place of pilgrimage for royalists. But the heavy doors of the medieval tower still exist and are kept at the Chateau de Vincennes outside of Paris. The Temple Metro station, which sits in a square near where the old Temple stood, was also close to my apartment.
