For more than a century, Rue Paradis through downtown Marseille has catered to affluent shoppers, from the Mediterranean merchants of yore to those seeking designer fashions today.
Now, the avenue, whose name means Paradise Street, lies battered and in crisis.
Cracks snake across many shop windows, and others are boarded up. Some stores have been cleaned out by looters.
“Store is empty,” read a handwritten sign taped to the door of a perfumery. “Closed.”
A week ago, mostly peaceful demonstrations in cities across France devolved into clashes between protesters and the police. Then looters entered the fray, breaking into stores, supermarkets and shopping malls, and hauling off whatever they could.
In Marseille, France’s second-largest city, the pillaging hit the historic downtown hard, with about 500 businesses affected, according to the regional Chamber of Commerce. In one mall, Centre Bourse, looters sacked 32 out of 34 stores. Others set their sights on Paradise Street.
After days of government-imposed protest bans and curfews, a demonstration was expected to go ahead in Marseille on Saturday. As the day approached, merchants were still recovering from the looting while wondering why the police had been so unprepared to stop it.
“We never expected that we would live that,” said Nicole Richard-Verspieren, who heads a local business association. “There was fear. After that there was anger. Now people want to protect themselves.”
She spoke while packing much of the inventory of her wine shop into boxes to be moved elsewhere, just in case.
Other nearby businesspeople were installing security systems or nailing boards over shattered vitrines. Some were considering arming themselves, Ms. Richard-Verspieren said, adding that her association discouraged it.
Social conditions in Marseille, a city of 895,000 people on the Mediterranean, exacerbated the unrest, experts said. While it has an active cargo port, dynamic cultural life and significant tourism, it remains France’s most economically unequal metropolis.
“Marseille is a city that contains real poverty,” said Michel Peraldi, an anthropologist who has long studied the city. Many of its poor live in neighborhoods north of downtown that have benefited little from the city’s development. And a large share are young.
“That explains part of what happened, at least some of the frustrations that were expressed,” Mr. Peraldi said.
Paradise Street begins a few blocks from the city’s Old Port and heads south. Lining its downtown portion are quaint apartment buildings with wooden shutters, small balconies and ground-floor shops.
On the sidewalk, William Naim watched workers affixing boards over the front of his custom-jewelry store. He is a fifth-generation jeweler, he said, whose father left Tunisia for Marseille decades ago.
On the afternoon of the riot, Mr. Naim said, he received a notification that the alarm at his store had gone off, and rushed to the scene. Looters had torn open the metal grate over the entrance and broken in.
“They took all they could take,” he said. He, his father and brothers stood outside the shop until late that night to deter looters. One of them yanked off and stole his necklace, he said.
Like many merchants, Mr. Naim distinguished looters from protesters, whom he supported.
“The protests are important because we are in a country where we can express ourselves and where we can listen to others, whether we agree with them or not,” he said.
Down the street, a woman working for a gold dealer that had been ransacked said she had been shocked by her own children’s responses to the burglary.
Her son, 14, got excited when he saw looters breaking into stores, she said. Her daughter, 15, told her, “We’ll never have a chance to have clothes from Hermès.”
The woman, who spoke on condition that only her first name, Maha, be published, shared feelings common among protesters that the French state was failing its citizens. Her daughter is a good student, but worries that she will not enter a good university. When her son got injured recently, the family waited six hours for care at a state hospital.
“In France?” she said in disbelief.
Nearby blocks were a patchwork of shops that had been damaged and others that had been spared.
Stores housing well-known brands like Nespresso, Swatch and Longchamp were boarded over and closed. Dr. Martens and Intimissimi were also boarded up but remained open.
Outside a store whose sign read, “Hunting Weapons and Ammunition,” a man smoked furiously and declined to speak with journalists.
A nearby hairdresser, Kevin Varnier, 25, said he expected the security forces to act forcefully to prevent further unrest.
“The state can’t leave Marseille at the bottom,” he said. “The violence that was done needs to be paid back.”
To help local merchants, the Chamber of Commerce opened a drop-in center where businesspeople could report problems and seek aid.
Karine Guillem, an official overseeing the effort, said common concerns included how to protect their shops, make insurance claims, cover their rent and replenish their looted inventories.
Many merchants worried that the crisis was not over.
“The question that keeps coming back is, What next?” she said. “What will happen now?”
Sophie Boutière-Damahi contributed reporting.
The post Looting Left Damage and Fear on Paradise Street in Marseille appeared first on New York Times.
