Paris Butte-Aux-Cailles And Chinatown (13ème)

The 13ème may have served as the setting of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, but these days you're more likely to see a postmodern performance of Les Miz than any fashionably-starving children. Despite once being one of Paris's poorest arrondissements, the arrival of the high-speed metro line and the ZAC Paris Rive Gauche redevelopment project have since transformed the neighborhood into a dynamic community and colorful hub of food and culture. Butte-Aux-Cailles attracts a young, artsy crowd that lovingly tags the walls with graffiti. Across the way, Chinatown stretches across multiple metro stops, and is defined by a unique cultural hybridization rarely seen among immigrant enclaves, in both Paris and beyond.

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