Brilliant Paris
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All 36 places

Each place has its own page: its story, what to look for, the plaques around it, the nearest Métro and the neighbouring places on foot, with distances computed on the street network.

Paris1234567891011121314151617181920Galerie ViviennePassage des PanoramasPassage JouffroyGalerie Véro-DodatMusée de la Vie romantiqueMusée Nissim de CamondoMusée Gustave MoreauMusée national Eugène-DelacroixMusée BourdelleMusée Cognacq-JayMusée de MontmartreMaison de BalzacMaison de Victor HugoHôtel de LauzunBibliothèque MazarineArènes de LutèceHouse of Nicolas FlamelTour Jean-sans-PeurHôtel de SensWall of Philippe Auguste (rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul)Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre and square René-VivianiCour de Rohan and Cour du Commerce-Saint-AndréRue François-MironClos Montmartre vineyardPetite Ceinture in the 15thSquare du Vert-GalantCoulée verte René-Dumont (Promenade plantée)Picpus CemeteryCité floraleChapelle expiatoireSaint-Germain-de-CharonneHôpital Saint-Louis (historic quadrangle)Rotonde de la Villette (Barrière Saint-Martin)Fontaine des Quatre-SaisonsParis Observatory (Perrault building)Cour de l’Étoile-d’Or
The twenty arrondissements, the Seine and the canals. Gilt diamonds are the places in this guide.

Covered passages (4)

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. Covered passages · 2nd Passage des Panoramas Named for vanished rotundas of painted cities: the oldest Paris passage, and the first public place in town lit by gas. Covered passages · 9th Passage Jouffroy Iron, glass and a heated floor: the 1840s passage that carries the Panoramas north, with a dogleg, a few steps and the waxworks’ back door. Covered passages · 1st Galerie Véro-Dodat Two pork butchers’ 1826 shortcut between the Palais-Royal and Les Halles, where crowds once pressed against a window full of caricatures.

Small museums (7)

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. 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. Small museums · 9th Musée Gustave Moreau A painter who turned his own house into his museum, with walls of gold-flecked visions and a spiral staircase climbing between them. Small museums · 6th Musée national Eugène-Delacroix The last apartment and garden studio of Delacroix, taken so he could walk to his murals at Saint-Sulpice, and saved by painters who revered him. Small museums · 15th Musée Bourdelle The Montparnasse studios where Antoine Bourdelle worked for over forty years, plaster giants and all, a few steps from the station. Small museums · 3rd Musée Cognacq-Jay The eighteenth-century treasures of the couple who founded La Samaritaine, now in a Renaissance house in the Marais. Small museums · 18th Musée de Montmartre A seventeenth-century house on the Butte where Renoir painted his dance hall and Valadon, Utrillo and Utter shared a studio.

Writers’ houses (4)

Writers’ houses · 16th Maison de Balzac The garden flat in Passy where Balzac hid from his creditors under a borrowed name, with a back way out down to the rue Berton. Writers’ houses · 4th Maison de Victor Hugo Sixteen years of Hugo’s life in a corner of the place des Vosges: the plays, the grief, the first drafts of Les Misérables. 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. Writers’ houses · 6th Bibliothèque Mazarine Cardinal Mazarin’s library, open to scholars since 1643 and still a working reading room under the dome of the Institut de France.

Oldest Paris (8)

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 · 3rd House of Nicolas Flamel A charity house of 1407 built by a Paris scrivener whom later centuries turned into an alchemist. Its tenants owed him prayers. 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. Oldest Paris · 4th Hôtel de Sens The archbishops’ Gothic town house by the Seine, now a library of posters and crafts, with a cannonball of 1830 still in its wall. Oldest Paris · 4th Wall of Philippe Auguste (rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul) Sixty metres of the wall a king built around Paris before leaving on crusade, now the backdrop to a basketball court. Oldest Paris · 5th Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre and square René-Viviani A twelfth-century church where the University once met, now Melkite, beside a garden with a robinia said to date from 1601. 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. Oldest Paris · 4th Rue François-Miron Two timber-framed houses that look medieval and may partly be, on a street that follows a Roman road out of the city.

Gardens & green ways (6)

Gardens & green ways · 18th Clos Montmartre vineyard A north-facing vineyard planted in 1933 to stop a building plot, and celebrated with a harvest festival since 1934. 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. Gardens & green ways · 1st Square du Vert-Galant The prow of the Île de la Cité, a garden at water level below Henri IV’s statue, near the spot where the last Templar master burned. Gardens & green ways · 12th Coulée verte René-Dumont (Promenade plantée) A railway viaduct turned into a garden walk above the 12e, the first of its kind, with craftsmen’s workshops in the arches below. Gardens & green ways · 12th Picpus Cemetery A convent garden that became the burial pit for 1,306 victims of the Terror, and where Lafayette lies under an American flag. Gardens & green ways · 13th Cité florale A triangle of small houses and gardens on streets named for wisteria, iris and bindweed, built on a meadow the Bièvre used to flood.

Curiosities (7)

Curiosities · 8th Chapelle expiatoire Louis XVIII’s chapel on the cemetery where his guillotined brother and Marie-Antoinette were buried, and where hundreds more still lie. Curiosities · 20th Saint-Germain-de-Charonne A village church on a slope above rue de Bagnolet, still standing in its own churchyard, one of only two left in Paris. Curiosities · 10th Hôpital Saint-Louis (historic quadrangle) A plague hospital founded by Henri IV in 1607, its brick-and-stone quadrangle still enclosing a quiet garden inside a working hospital. Curiosities · 19th Rotonde de la Villette (Barrière Saint-Martin) Ledoux’s tax temple of the 1780s, built into the hated customs wall around Paris, where the royal family changed coaches on the night of Varennes. Curiosities · 7th Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons Bouchardon’s palace of a fountain on a narrow street, all marble allegory and very little water. Voltaire was not impressed. Curiosities · 14th Paris Observatory (Perrault building) Louis XIV’s observatory of 1667, built square on the meridian of Paris, where the speed of light was first shown to be finite. Curiosities · 11th Cour de l’Étoile-d’Or Two cobbled courtyards of the furniture-makers’ faubourg, with a 1640s staircase, a sundial and the workshops that replaced a garden.