2nd arrondissement of Paris
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The 2nd arrondissement (2e arrondissement) is one of the 20 arrondissements of Paris, the capital city of France. Located on the right bank of the River Seine, the 2nd arrondissement, together with the adjacent 8th and 9th arrondissements, hosts an important business district, centred on the Paris Opéra, which houses the city's most dense concentration of business activities. The arondissement contains the former Paris Bourse (stock exchange) and a large number of banking headquarters, as well as a textile district, known as the Sentier, and the Opéra-Comique concert hall.
The 2nd arrondissment is also the home of most of Paris's surviving 19th-century glazed commercial arcades. At the beginning of the 19th century most of the streets of Paris were dark and muddy and lacked sidewalks. A few entrepreneurs copied the success of the Passage des Panoramas and its well-lit, dry and paved pedestrian passageways. By the middle of the 19th century there were about two dozen of these commercial malls, but most of them disappeared as the Paris authorities paved the main streets, added sidewalks and gas street lighting. The commercial survivors are – in addition to the Passage des Panoramas – the Galerie Vivienne, the Passage Choiseul, the Galerie Colbert, the Passage des Princes, the Passage du Grand Cerf, the Passage du Caire, the Passage Lemoine, the Passage Jouffroy, the Passage Basfour, the Passage du Bourg-L'abbé, and the Passage du Ponceau.
