Never heard of the Quinze-Vingts? You're not alone; even many Parisians have no clue where it is. If there is not a metro named after it, in the Parisians eye, it might as well not exist. The Quinze-Vingts is the westernmost part of the 12th arrondissement and bordered by the Seine to the south, the Bassin de l'Arsenal to the west, the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine to the north and the Hôpital Saint-Antoine and Gare de Lyon to the east. In its centre is the Quartier d'Aligre.

Quinze-Vingts derived its name from the hospital of the same name, just behind Bastille. It housed 300 beds for the blind so it was called "The 300". A strange twist of linguistics though, it wasn't called Trois Cents or Three Hundred but Quinze-Vingts or Fifteen-Twenties. The usage comes from the old Vigesimal numbering system where twenty was the base number as opposed to ten. Even though Quinze-Vingts literally reads Fifteen-Twenties, it is read and understood as simply 300. The Vigesimal numbering system has long disappeared from modern French... almost. Some of you might have noticed it still exists when the French say quatre-vingts, or four-twenties which logic dictates, means eighty.

Le marché d’Aligre