Square Frédérick Lemaître

Square Frédérick Lemaître occupies a unique vantage point directly above the spot where the Canal Saint-Martin descends into an underground tunnel. Created in eighteen ninety-one, this green space sits as a narrow island between the Quai de Jemmapes and the Quai de Valmy. It serves as a theater for the daily mechanics of the canal, where you can watch boats maneuver through the Écluse du Temple, one of the historic locks that regulates the water levels for river traffic. The square takes its name from a towering figure of nineteenth-century French theater, the actor Frédérick Lemaître. He earned his reputation on the legendary Boulevard du Temple, a street once nicknamed the Boulevard of Crime because of the grisly and dramatic melodramas that dominated the theaters there. A stone bust of the actor, sculpted by Pierre Granet in eighteen ninety-eight, stands in the center of the park today to commemorate his legacy. His life and career were immortalized in the classic nineteen forty-three film Children of Paradise, which captured the vibrant and often dangerous spirit of the theatrical world he inhabited. The park is also a recognized landmark in French cinema for reasons beyond its namesake. In the film Amélie, the titular character visits this very spot to indulge in the simple pleasure of skipping stones across the canal waters. You are standing in the same location where that famous scene was filmed, looking out over the same waters that have been a central part of Parisian industrial and leisure life since the canal opened in the early nineteenth century.