Rue de l’Épine Prolongée

Slipping through time’s back alleys, we find ourselves on Rue de l’Épine Prolongée. But let’s journey back to a lost Parisian street, the Rue Jean-de-l’Épine. This vanished thoroughfare, once located in the old 7th arrondissement (today’s 4th), met its end in 1855. Its demise came during Haussmann’s grand reshaping of Paris, specifically the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville and Rue de Rivoli. Imagine bustling crowds navigating a mere 74 meters of cobblestone, the street just 10 meters wide. The Rue Jean-de-l’Épine extended from Rue de la Vannerie and Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville to Rue de la Coutellerie and Rue de la Tixéranderie. The street numbers, painted in black, climbed to 23 on the odd side and 24 on the even. Our ghostly street bore the name of a 13th-century Parisian bourgeois, Jean de l’Épine. Records suggest his house, according to a Saint-Maur cartulary, opened onto the Place de Grève, the precursor to Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville. Interestingly, by the 15th century, the street was known as Rue Philippe-de-l’Épine. A ministerial decision in 1816 set the street’s width at 7 meters, later expanded to 10 meters by royal decree in 1836. The last vestiges of this bygone lane fell to the wrecking ball in February and March of 1855. While Rue Jean-de-l’Épine is no more, the echoes of its name and history whisper on modern maps as Rue de l’Épine Prolongée. This “extended” street carries a fragment of the old city within its modern name, a silent tribute to the vanished Rue Jean-de-l’Épine.