Once considered redundant, public bathhouses are making a return to the suburbs surrounding Paris. Two decades after its last bathhouse closed, the northern suburb of Saint-Denis has opened a new set of municipal showers where anyone can take a wash for free.
Signs advertising “bains-douches” are a familiar sight on the streets of Paris, where public bathhouses sprang up by the dozen in the days before indoor plumbing came as standard.
But these days, the signs are more likely to mark an art school or cultural centre than a functioning washhouse.
Only 17 bathhouses are still in operation in Paris today, while in the banlieues surrounding the French capital, the last such facilities closed years ago.
Now the sprawling suburb of Saint-Denis, on the northern outskirts of Paris, is reversing the trend. The area recently reopened a municipal bathhouse, its first since 2004.
Credit: rfi
