Just outside Paris, a secret world has offered city dwellers an escape for centuries. In the charming towns along the Marne River, generations of revelers come together to eat, drink, dance, and enjoy the season.

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“When you cross the bridge,” Baptiste Leveillard leans in close to tell me, “it’s another world.” He’s on the dance floor, bathed in spangled light from a revolving disco ball, boogying with his year-old son, Valentin, in his arms. As the band plays a bouncy tune, the rest of the crowd starts line dancing. French people, line dancing! Another world, indeed. I’ve just crossed the wooden footbridge to La Guinguette de l’Île du Martin-Pêcheur (The Guinguette of Kingfisher Island) on the Marne River, a 20-minute train trip southeast of Paris. The geranium-lined bridge leads to a terrace bordered with 100-year-old chestnut trees. Strings of colored lights zigzag overhead. Young people, older folks, and multigenerational families sit at long tables covered in red-checked oilcloth. Beyond, there’s a simple wooden building with more tables and a dance floor that opens onto the terrace. Dancers spill outside. The scene (sans disco ball) could be right out of a Renoir painting. In fact, guinguettes—riverside pavilions offering simple food, cheap wine, and live music and dancing—have been a part of French culture for centuries. Their heyday came during the Belle Époque, around the turn of the 20th century, when hundreds lined the rivers outside Paris. Today, only a handful remain. But the guinguettes’ mystique—as magical, carefree places where strict social rules don’t apply—holds a powerful place in the French psyche. If you’ve ever been mesmerized by a dreamy, sun-splashed impressionist painting showing women in frothy dresses being twirled about by men sporting jaunty boater hats, you’ve gotten a taste of it. And that feeling is what still draws nostalgic city dwellers seeking a summertime escape.



“Everybody in France knows the banks of the Marne,” declares Leveillard, raising his voice over the lively music. “Everybody knows the guinguettes.” The term guinguette (pronounced gan-GET) most likely comes from the word giguer, “to dance a jig.” That verb spawned the nickname guinguet for the cheap beverage of choice—“a wicked little green wine,” according to a 1750 dictionary—served at the guinguettes and said to be so sour it would make goats dance. Photo by Tara Donne In l’Île du Martin-Pêcheur, class distinctions fade and generations mingle.



In true French style, we begin with a sparkling aperitif. Riousset explains that guinguettes come to us thanks to a fine heritage of French tax evaders. As far back as 300 years ago, and up until 1943, wine entering Paris was subject to a hefty tax, the octroi. So establishments serving tax-free wine began popping up just beyond the city limits. Each time Paris expanded, the guinguettes would leapfrog over the border and Parisians would party on. In 1860, Napoleon III gobbled up enough surrounding territory to expand Paris from 12 arrondissements (districts) to its current 20, and sent railways shooting out to the bucolic hinterlands. When the guinguettes were forced to uproot that one last time, many settled along the Marne River, within easy access of the new railroad stations. And with that, the next era of Parisian leisure was born. On Sunday afternoons, nature-starved Parisians would flee the grimy, stifling city for canoeing, canoodling, and the chance to spin and spin to a giddy valse musette, forgetting the week’s troubles. The guinguettes’ mystique—as magical, carefree places where strict social rules don’t apply—holds a powerful place in the French psyche. Tonight, the wine is better, but the scene is still hopping. I’m dining outside with local historian Michel Riousset and my husband, Paul. Riousset, in his early 60s, is small and wiry, with curly gray hair. His family has lived in Joinville-le-Pont on the banks of the Marne since 1896, and we’ve rented his chalet des canotiers, a boating cottage built in 1882, nestled amid roses in his garden.In true French style, we begin with a sparkling aperitif. Riousset explains that guinguettes come to us thanks to a fine heritage of French tax evaders. As far back as 300 years ago, and up until 1943, wine entering Paris was subject to a hefty tax, the octroi. So establishments serving tax-free wine began popping up just beyond the city limits. Each time Paris expanded, the guinguettes would leapfrog over the border and Parisians would party on. In 1860, Napoleon III gobbled up enough surrounding territory to expand Paris from 12 arrondissements (districts) to its current 20, and sent railways shooting out to the bucolic hinterlands. When the guinguettes were forced to uproot that one last time, many settled along the Marne River, within easy access of the new railroad stations. And with that, the next era of Parisian leisure was born. On Sunday afternoons, nature-starved Parisians would flee the grimy, stifling city for canoeing, canoodling, and the chance to spin and spin to a giddy valse musette, forgetting the week’s troubles. I start my guinguette meal with a traditional friture d’éperlans (fried smelt), lightly battered and served whole. It resembles a plateful of shoestring fries with eyes. Following Riousset’s lead, I use my fingers to dip them in aioli, then pop them—heads, tails, eyes, and all—into my mouth.

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The proprietor, Jean-Yves Dupin, a friend of Riousset, stops by to visit. “I had to turn down 200 or 300 people who called today for reservations,” he tells us. On this beautiful, warm Saturday night, the whole world wanted to be here. But he has room for only about 300. “La guinguette est vie,” he says, his tired face lighting up: “The guinguette is life.”



I ask Dupin why his guinguette is thriving when so many others have closed over the past hundred years. “Many have failed due to economic reasons,” he explains. “They are part of French popular culture, but they’re a demanding business. You work very much in the summer but little in the winter.” Two world wars and the introduction of the automobile made it impossible for guinguettes to sustain their Belle Époque glory days. “After the war, in the ’60s, Parisians had cars,” he adds. “They could go farther away. We lost them.” (Today, in central Paris, a new wave of summertime-only “modern guinguettes” has sprung up along the Seine, offering food and music if not a total escape from the city.)



But Dupin developed a formula for success. “A guinguette is one of the rare establishments that embraces all the generations, from children right up to grandmothers,” he explains. Dupin caters to them all, with an eclectic blend of live music ranging from traditional accordion standbys to pounding rock. “We have here much joy, many good surprises!” he exclaims. “Everyone comes to a guinguette. The miracle, that’s it!” Photo by Tara Donne Guinguettes—riverside pavilions offering simple food, cheap wine, and live music and dancing—have been a part of French culture for centuries.



Back at our table, I ask Riousset if the clientele at guinguettes was always like this. “Yes, the classes and ages mixed in the past,” he replies, adding, “but some guinguettes were not recommended for young girls of good families. Remember, in those days, it was considered vulgar to be sunburned. A woman without a hat, it was terrible!”



The banks of the Marne were an escape from those strict social mores, a place where beaus might steal a kiss and bohemians could mingle with millionaires. “Outside of Paris, it was incognito,” Riousset says. “Men could meet with women of lesser virtue. Directors of companies would come here with their secretaries, as late as the 1960s. It was mentally very far from Paris.” What happened on the banks of the Marne stayed on the banks of the Marne.



Early the next morning, we stroll along the river through greenery punctuated by cascades of tiny wild roses and spikes of hollyhocks. The fanciful houses lining the water were built as weekend and vacation homes, most toward the end of the 19th century. There are little châteaux, art nouveau manses, faux-rustic villas, and overgrown elfin cottages. Some have turrets, sited to watch the sleek rowing sculls that glide by every few minutes or so. Boating was France’s first popular leisure sport, and members of 100-year-old boating clubs still ply the Marne. Related Five Ways to Vacation Like the French The band beckons us to the dance floor. Paul and I join in for a rousing, hip-swiveling French rendition of “Let’s Twist Again.” A man in snazzy two-tone shoes jives with a woman sporting red high-top sneakers. There are party dresses, blue jeans, and boys with their hair slicked into place by persnickety moms. It feels like we’ve landed in the middle of My Big Fat French Wedding.Back at our table, I ask Riousset if the clientele at guinguettes was always like this. “Yes, the classes and ages mixed in the past,” he replies, adding, “but some guinguettes were not recommended for young girls of good families. Remember, in those days, it was considered vulgar to be sunburned. A woman without a hat, it was terrible!”The banks of the Marne were an escape from those strict social mores, a place where beaus might steal a kiss and bohemians could mingle with millionaires. “Outside of Paris, it was incognito,” Riousset says. “Men could meet with women of lesser virtue. Directors of companies would come here with their secretaries, as late as the 1960s. It was mentally very far from Paris.” What happened on the banks of the Marne stayed on the banks of the Marne.Early the next morning, we stroll along the river through greenery punctuated by cascades of tiny wild roses and spikes of hollyhocks. The fanciful houses lining the water were built as weekend and vacation homes, most toward the end of the 19th century. There are little châteaux, art nouveau manses, faux-rustic villas, and overgrown elfin cottages. Some have turrets, sited to watch the sleek rowing sculls that glide by every few minutes or so. Boating was France’s first popular leisure sport, and members of 100-year-old boating clubs still ply the Marne.

Later in the morning, at the nearby Nogent-sur-Marne marina, we hire an electric boat to explore the river’s green waters. I want to feel what it must have been like for weekend revelers in times past, taking a promenade sur l’eau (river excursion) before pulling up at the dock of a guinguette.



As we putter along, we have a prime view of grand villas on the banks, as well as a few modern buildings sullying the terrain here and there. We pass by the leafy Île des Loups (Island of Wolves) and the Île d’Amour (Island of Love), once home to long-gone guinguettes and still accessible only by water. Boating offered sunshine, fresh air, and a bit of privacy back in the days when a proper single woman couldn’t be alone with a man in the city. Seen from our little craft, the trailing branches of willow trees look like curtains that would be perfect for hiding a canoe during a romantic interlude. Photo by Tara Donne Take Paris’s commuter train system and you can be at a guingette in less than 30 minutes. Most establishments are seasonal, with live music only on weekends.



A couple of older women at the next table, spying little white fluff-ball Pierre, bend down to fawn over him. Our jolly waiter, clearly feeling a bit envious, kneels on the floor, raises his hands like begging paws, then tilts his head and starts panting. The women play right along, patting his head and scratching him under the chin. Pierre is nonplussed.



In a touch that seems handed down from the era when Chez Gégène was the hangout for stars from the nearby Pathé film studios, a photographer circulates, snapping souvenir photos. The band—conga, bass, keyboards, drums, and accordion—plays a variety of ballroom and old-school French favorites. There are some serious dancers, as intimidating as they are fun to watch. Weekends are the best times to visit guinguettes, when most have live music. After our boat ride, Paul and I head to the Marne’s best-known spot, Chez Gégène , for Sunday lunch. The riverside tables are packed on this hot, sunny afternoon, so we sit indoors with our expat friend Luz, who has made the 15-minute train ride from Paris to join us, along with her shih tzu pup, Pierre.A couple of older women at the next table, spying little white fluff-ball Pierre, bend down to fawn over him. Our jolly waiter, clearly feeling a bit envious, kneels on the floor, raises his hands like begging paws, then tilts his head and starts panting. The women play right along, patting his head and scratching him under the chin. Pierre is nonplussed.In a touch that seems handed down from the era when Chez Gégène was the hangout for stars from the nearby Pathé film studios, a photographer circulates, snapping souvenir photos. The band—conga, bass, keyboards, drums, and accordion—plays a variety of ballroom and old-school French favorites. There are some serious dancers, as intimidating as they are fun to watch.

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Later, Chez Gégène’s manager, Bernard Nicolau-Bergeret, walks me around the interior, explaining the photos and murals lining the walls. “This,” he says, pointing to a painted frieze around the smaller of two dance floors, “depicts all the amusements that were here in the past. It was the Disneyland of its day!” “La guinguette est vie,” he says, his tired face lighting up: “The guinguette is life.”

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