For Parisians who have gradually surrendered more and more of their city to tourism, Penha de França has a touch of what Montmartre was before mass tourism took over. When surrealists had cheap ateliers and even later, when queer icon Dalida could still wander freely to the mercado with blonde Egyptian swagger.

Penha de França hosts illustrious forebearers at the Alto de São João Cemetery, the quiet story of the Azulejo at the Tile Museum, and secures a direct ticket to Alentejo via the Train Station Santa Apolónia, and fortunately it does not bear a Sacré Coeur. With a community-based way of life, it’s laid-back, real, uncrowded, and where people still read the paper or books, chat on street corners, and share the same sidewalk, young or old, walking their dogs.

A woman smokes quietly on a balcony. A man chats with his parrot a few houses down. A boy crosses Rua Cidade de Manchester by the corner barbershop.

"A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.”
–Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind, Spanish novelist.

Photography by Claudine Boeglin – all rights reserved.

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