Rue Montorgueil is a street in the 2nd arrondissement (in the Châtelet-Les Halles district). Filled with famous restaurants, quaint cafés, bakeries, fish stores, cheese shops, wine shops, produce stands and flower shops, it has become recognised as one of the best places to socialise while doing the daily shopping in Paris.
At the southernmost tip of rue Montorgueil is the famed Saint-Eustache Church, the Centre Georges Pompidou (Museum of Contemporary Art) and Les Halles, containing the largest indoor shopping mall in central Paris, and to the north is the area known as the Grands Boulevards.
Interesting places on Rue Montorgueil:
L’Escargot (38 rue Montorgueil)
French cuisine; 10-50€; Mon-Sun 9.00-23.30; tel. (00 33) 01 42 36 83 51
Au Rocher de Cancale (78 rue Montorgueil)
French cuisine; 15-17€; Mon-Sun 8.00-2.00; tel. (00 33) 01 42 33 50 29
La Maison Stohrer (51 rue Montorgueil)
Bakery; 1-250€; Mon-Sun 7.30-20.30; tel. (00 33) 01 42 33 38 20
“La Rue Montorgueil” is a painting by Claude Monet (1878). It represents the street during the Bastille Day and closing day of the Expo, June 30, 1878. The street is filled with a profusion of French flags.
In “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo, it says: “At work, at paying out a cable or winding up a capstan, Jean Valjean was worth four men. He sometimes lifted and sustained enormous weights on his back; and when the occasion demanded it, he replaced that implement which is called a jack-screw, and was formerly called orgueil (pride), whence, we may remark in passing, is derived the name of the Rue Montorgueil, near the Halles (Fishmarket) in Paris.’
The video for the song “Baby Baby Baby” by group Make The Girl Dance, directed by Pierre Mathieu, was shot in the Rue Montorgueil. It shows three naked girls, with black bars obscuring their intimacy, alternately filmed in clip up the street with a radio in their hands and singing the lyrics.