Cafes and museums of Paris, staggered by attacks, begin revival

Of all the restaurants in this city's usually bustling Latin Quarter, Le Procope stands out for the peculiarly Parisian mix of actors and artists, poets and politicians, writers and revolutionaries who have frequented its salons over the centuries. Many luminaries of the French Enlightenment - Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot, among others - fostered heady ideals of liberty and equality here, their framed likenesses still presiding over the entrance as a reminder of those values to anyone who crosses the threshold.

So as fewer people have taken that step in the wake of the attacks on Nov. 13, it is as if Le Procope is standing as a symbol of the shared wounds this city, and its culture, have sustained.

"I've never seen the restaurant so empty" as it was immediately after the attacks, said Yolenn Alexandre, the hostess. Although Le Procope didn't take a direct hit like the bars and restaurants of the 11th arrondissement, where the attacks unfurled, "it's still hard," Alexandre said.

But things are getting better.

"Paris revit," said Karine David, as she ate lunch with a friend at the Bistrot de la Tour Eiffel, which has had a 40 percent drop in visitors: "Paris is living again."

The French government has outlined a two-pronged strategy to bolster that recovery. President François Hollande described plans to give asylum in France to cultural artifacts from Syria and Iraq that are either being destroyed by the Islamic State or sold to finance its terrorism. The cash-strapped French government is planning to provide support to restaurants, small businesses and cultural attractions buffeted by the assaults that some estimate could cost the country $2 billion.

"France will dance again, sing again, draw new cartoons, and culture will remain proud, insolent and free," Fleur Pellerin, the minister of culture, announced within days of the attacks, promising to invest in books, shows and other symbols of French freedoms.

The attackers had declared war on French culture, Pellerin said. And in France's war on terror, she argued, culture is her country's pièce de résistance.

With the focus of the recent attacks on a stadium, a concert hall and restaurants, the bigger challenge facing cultural institutions may be luring out-of-towners back.

The Louvre Museum, which has about 10 million visitors a year, has welcomed far fewer people through its beefed-up security than in a typical November week, said a security guard stationed by the I.M. Pei-designed pyramid. Getting access "is like going into an airport," he said.

And outside the Rodin Museum, which reopened after a three-year renovation just one day before the attacks, a chilly line of people waited in the rain Wednesday to have their bags searched.

Stores and brasseries in central Paris similarly report declines. "I've seen very few tourists," said Madame Cazes, who owns a bar named the Relais du Louvre and didn't want to give her first name. Usually, she said, late November marks the start of a busy holiday season that lasts into January.

Universities have stepped up security measures and lost some foreign students visiting on cultural exchanges. Arielle Gordon, 20, a student at Northwestern University who is spending a semester at Paris's university of the social sciences, Sciences Po, began receiving regular emails from administrators after the attacks. They offered support (including free group counseling) as well as reminders to carry identification, which is now required to enter any building.

Francie Plough Seder, resident director of Trinity College's study abroad program, one of 200 such U.S. programs in France, said four U.S. students out of 30 have left her program. The vast majority of students want to finish their semester abroad, she said. And the timing of the attacks, she said, allowed many families to visit over Thanksgiving and learn what Paris feels like. Largely, she thinks, they have been reassured.

A shared recourse to humor has helped, said Jane Weston Vauclair, who completed her doctoral thesis on the magazine Charlie Hebdo a few years ago and is coauthoring a book on the satirical publication - attacked by gunmen in January - to be launched this month.

Parisians laughed at comedian John Oliver's expletive-filled defense of French culture in the face of the Islamic State.

"If you are in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good f---ing luck," ranted the host of HBO's "Last Week Tonight."

"Go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They'll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Gauloise cigarettes, Camus, camembert, madeleines, macarons, and the f---ing croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend."

Still, the macarons at the Lemoine delicatessen near the Eiffel Tower aren't selling as they should be. Nor are the blackcurrant, the harlequin, the mango or the foie gras that are lined up in elegant rows in the window display. It is not only because of the lack of tourists.

"Even the French are buying fewer," the man behind the counter said.

Many tourists, though, have found Paris particularly welcoming this year.

Harold Gordon, Arielle Gordon's father, who came with five other family members to visit his daughter for Thanksgiving, said several friends in the United States tried to dissuade them from making the trip. If they had followed that advice, he said, "what would we be telling our daughter implicitly?"

Oliver Sommer, taking family photographs outside the Louvre, said he, his wife and their children had a family meeting on the evening before their flight.

"I was scared there were going to be more attacks," said his daughter Zoe, 10.

They were also a little concerned, said Oliver's wife, Jennifer, about coming for a vacation to a place where people were feeling somber. But they decided to come and to gain a fresh perspective.

Their home in Connecticut, Jennifer Sommer explained, is just a half-hour drive from the site of the kind of American tragedy France has never suffered: the school shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary.