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From the Belle Époque to the Trente Glorieuses, or from one fin de siècle to another, the marginal territory of the Paris “zone” captured the public imagination. The wastelands of the zone, wedged between the intramuros city and its suburbs, were inhabited by Gypsies, ragpickers, basket-makers and other impoverished workers, but also frequented by thugs and gangsters whose unsavoury reputation coloured perceptions of the entire area. This article seeks not so much to record the history of the zone as to resurrect some of the stories it inspired. In novels, newspapers and popular music, the zone became the quintessential embodiment of a marginal exoticism that alarmed polite society. While the renovation of Paris and the construction of the boulevard périphérique from the 1950s gradually erased the zone as a physical space, it nevertheless survived as a symbol of society’s déclassés.