Rue Montorgueil

This guide to Rue Montorgueil in Paris opens with Nicolas Stohrer, a Polish pastry chef who arrived with the royal entourage in 1725 and opened a shop on this street five years later. It follows a complaint from the exiled king Stanislas about a dry brioche, and traces the street's much older life as the route feeding Les Halles, the market that fed Paris for eight centuries until its 1971 demolition. You'll also hear how Monet came to paint this street on a flag-draped holiday in 1878. Walk it hungry, and stop wherever the market smell pulls you off the cobblestones.