Place Saint-Sépulcre

Place Saint-Sépulcre is a cobbled courtyard on the northern edge of Nice’s Babazouk and the setting of Paul Darac’s home. Its locked gate and surrounding old apartment houses place his private roof-terrace life within a quarter that is lively in its streets but notably secretive behind its façades.

Setting and Character

The place is described as a large courtyard rather than a grand square: ancient apartment houses line three sides, while the rear wall of the church of the same name closes the fourth. Street signs in the Babazouk appear in French and Nissart, marking the local language within a cityscape that also connects to the wider boulevards.

Darac acquired a roof-terrace apartment in the courtyard five years before the scene. The position suits him as a life suspended between two versions of Nice: the tangled, tiled rooftops of the old town and the more open city of the boulevards. The courtyard is therefore not merely an address but a point of transition between enclosure and the larger urban world.

The Gate and Everyday Encounters

Darac reaches the courtyard along the doglegged lanes leading off Rue Neuve and enters through a locked iron gate. Before he has gone more than a few steps, his neighbour Suzanne hurries toward him. He smiles, turns back to unlock the gate, and holds it open in an exaggerated doorman’s pose. The small exchange gives the threshold a social function: it is a boundary that Darac controls, but also a place where neighbours meet and ordinary courtesies unfold.

The brief conversation establishes the day’s routine without making the courtyard feel isolated from the rest of Darac’s life. Suzanne asks whether he is late and whether he is working; Darac then continues inside after promising to pass along her request to kiss Angeline. He relocks the gate behind him, carrying the neighbourhood’s familiar intimacy back into the privacy of the Plassa.

Atmosphere and Narrative Role

The courtyard is reached through the Babazouk, whose narrow streets and alleyways are crowded with cafés, fish, flowers, and drains. Its colourful façades conceal everything from shabby flats to ornate palaces, while the shutters at the windows act as shields against prying eyes. Against this atmosphere, Place Saint-Sépulcre is both home and enclosure: a modest, bounded refuge within a quarter whose apparent openness conceals private lives.

After Darac re-enters the courtyard, he walks through blue shadows into the heat of the day. He expects the overheated city to bring out people’s craziness, and his mobile rings immediately afterward. The scene thus gives the courtyard a quiet role at the edge of the coming action: Darac passes from the controlled familiarity of home into a day that he already anticipates will be unsettled.