IIE ARRONDISSEMENT

The '2nd arrondissement' (''2^e 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 densest 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 all 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.

Contents

Geography

Demographics

Historical population

Immigration

Map

Cityscape

Places of interest in the arrondissement

Main streets and squares

Reference

Geography

The 2nd arrondissement is Paris's smallest arrondissement, with a land area of just 0.992 km² (0.383 sq. miles, or 245 acres)

Demographics

The 2nd arrondissement reached its peak of settlement in the years before 1861, although it has only existed in its current shape since the re-organization of Paris in 1860. As of the last census (in 1999), the population was 19,585, while the number of jobs provided there was 61,672 – this despite a land area of only 0.992 km², making it the arrondissement with the densest concentration of commercial activity in the capital, with an average of 62,695 jobs per km².

Historical population

Year (of French censuses)	Population	Density (inh. per km²)
1861 (peak of population)	81,609	82,267
1872	73,578	74,321
1954	41,780	44,300
1962	40,864	41,194
1968	35,357	35,642
1975	26,328	26,540
1982	21,203	21,374
1990	20,738	20,905
1999	19,585	19,743

Immigration

Map

Cityscape

Places of interest in the arrondissement

★ Paris stock exchange (Palais Brongniart, former headquarters)

★ Opéra-Comique

★ Passage des Panoramas

Main streets and squares

★ Place de la Bourse

★ Avenue de l'Opéra (partial)

★ Rue du Quatre-Septembre

★ Rue Réaumur

★ Rue Montmartre

★ Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre

★ Rue Notre-Dame des Victoires

★ Rue Saint-Denis

★ Rue Saint-Sauveur

★ Rue du Louvre

★ Rue de Turbigo

★ Rue Étienne-Marcel

★ Rue des Petits-Champs

★ Boulevard des Capucines

★ Boulevard des Italiens

★ Boulevard Montmartre

★ Boulevard Poissonnière

★ Boulevard de Bonne-Nouvelle

★ Boulevard Saint-Denis

★ Boulevard Sébastopol

★ Rue des Capucines

★ Rue de Cléry

★ Rue Monsigny

Reference

★ Le guide du routard 2006: Paris.

★ 54 Promenades en Famille. A Paris et en Ile-de-France.