Paris, by the side streets

Covered passages · 2nd Galerie Vivienne A notary’s speculation of the 1820s, Pompeian in its colours, where Vidocq once climbed the stairs at no. 13. Small museums · 9th Musée de la Vie romantique Ary Scheffer’s house and studios at the end of a cobbled lane, where Chopin, Sand and Delacroix came on Friday evenings. Oldest Paris · 5th Arènes de Lutèce A Roman arena behind a row of Haussmann flats, where Lutetia once watched plays and fights and the 5e now plays pétanque. Oldest Paris · 2nd Tour Jean-sans-Peur A duke’s tower built after a political murder, where a stone oak, hawthorn and hops spread across the top of the stair. Gardens & green ways · 15th Petite Ceinture in the 15th An abandoned railway that once ringed Paris, now a two-kilometre wild walk along the old tracks, through a tunnel opened in 2026. Writers’ houses · 4th Hôtel de Lauzun A gilded 1650s mansion on the Île Saint-Louis, where the young Baudelaire rented the attic and Gautier’s hashish eaters met. Oldest Paris · 6th Cour de Rohan and Cour du Commerce-Saint-André A cobbled passage of revolutionaries and medieval wall, and beyond it three quiet courtyards with the last mounting block in Paris. Small museums · 8th Musée Nissim de Camondo A banker’s eighteenth-century dream, built on the eve of 1914 and bequeathed as a museum in memory of a son killed in the air.

5 stops · 2.1 km The covered passages From a duke’s medieval tower to the glass-roofed arcades of the 1820s and 1840s, mostly under cover from the rain. 7 stops · 4.6 km Medieval Paris, from the Marais to Lutetia From Flamel’s house of 1407 across the islands to the Roman arena: the oldest Paris, piece by surviving piece. 4 stops · 1.9 km From the Nouvelle Athènes up to Montmartre Two painters’ houses below the hill, then a steady climb up the Butte to Renoir’s garden and the Montmartre vineyard. 5 stops · 3.1 km The Left Bank, from the river to the Faubourg Saint-Germain From the tip of the Cité to Mazarin’s library, a revolutionary passage, Delacroix’s garden studio and Bouchardon’s fountain. 5 stops · 4.5 km The Marais and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine From eighteenth-century treasures and Hugo’s apartment, through the craftsmen’s faubourg and along a railway garden, to Picpus. 3 stops · 4.2 km Sculptors’ studios and the meridian Bourdelle’s studios, Louis XIV’s observatory and a hamlet of flower-named lanes: a long walk south across ordinary city streets.

1802–1885Victor Hugo The poet who made a cathedral famous and a city epic, and whose coffin crossed Paris to the Panthéon. 1799–1850Honoré de Balzac The novelist who treated Paris as a living organism, street by street, and hid from his creditors in Passy. 1821–1867Charles Baudelaire The poet of the modern city, who watched old Paris fall to the Second Empire’s picks and wrote its elegy. 1804–1876George Sand Born in Paris, she came back in 1831 in boots and a frock coat, and the city became her freedom. 1808–1855Gérard de Nerval Night-walker of old Paris, who loved the last vineyard on Montmartre and died in a lane by the Châtelet. 1840–1902Émile Zola The novelist of Les Halles, the department store and the zinc bar, who ended at the Panthéon after J’accuse. 1871–1922Marcel Proust The novelist of the Champs-Élysées gardens and the Bois de Boulogne, who wrote his great book in a cork-lined room. 1812–1870Charles Dickens The Londoner who wintered in Paris, haunted its Morgue, and put the faubourg Saint-Antoine at the heart of A Tale of Two Cities.