Canal Saint-Martin

This guide to the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris starts with a 1938 film shoot that couldn't afford to film here, so the crew built a full replica on a studio lot instead, and traces how Arletty's line from that fake canal made the real one famous. It follows the canal back to Napoleon's 1802 order to dig it as a public-health project against cholera, and to the 1960s plan to fill it in and pave it over as a motorway. Walk the quai de Jemmapes and look for the real Hôtel du Nord at number one hundred and two, still standing among the iron footbridges.