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Galerie Vivienne

Covered passages · 2nd arrondissement

Galerie Vivienne

A notary’s speculation of the 1820s, Pompeian in its colours, where Vidocq once climbed the stairs at no. 13.

Photo: Anthony DELANOIX anthonydelanoix, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

In the 1820s Paris discovered that a roof of glass could turn a muddy shortcut into a shopping street. Louis-Auguste Marchoux, president of the city’s chamber of notaries, bought a cluster of properties between the rue des Petits-Champs and the rue Vivienne and in 1823 had the architect François-Jacques Delannoy draw a passage through them. It opened in 1826, first under its owner’s name, soon under the name of the street. Delannoy gave it a Pompeian dress: painted pilasters, wreaths, cornucopias and the caduceus of Hermes, god of trade, and a rotunda under a glazed dome where the gallery bends.

It worked. Tailors, a bootmaker, a bookseller and a confectioner took the first shops, and the passage, a few steps from the Palais-Royal and the Bourse, filled with walkers. A rival opened next door almost at once, the Galerie Colbert, and the two competed for the same crowd. In 1840 the staircase at no. 13 led to the rooms of Eugène-François Vidocq, the convict turned head of a police brigade, who in Balzac’s Paris was already half a legend.

Marchoux’s daughter, the sculptor Anne-Sophie Marchoux, comtesse de Caen, left the gallery at her death in 1870 to the Académie des beaux-arts, so that its rents would support young laureates of the Prix de Rome. The Académie still co-owns it. The rest of the century was harder: Haussmann’s boulevards and the department stores drew trade west, and by the 1960s shop after shop stood empty.

Listing as a historic monument in 1974 came just in time. In the 1980s fashion moved in, Jean-Paul Gaultier among the designers who showed here, and the passage became again what it was built to be: a place to stroll indoors, out of the rain, past windows. A major restoration was carried out in the mid-2010s, not without public argument about how much of the old patina should go.

What to look for

  • The rotunda under the glass dome, where the gallery changes direction.
  • The mosaic floor, which the city credits to the Italian mosaicist Giandomenico Facchina; it postdates the opening, since Facchina was born in 1826.
  • The staircase at no. 13, once the way up to Vidocq’s rooms.
  • Painted emblems of trade on the walls: caduceus, cornucopia, wreaths.
  • The view through to the Galerie Colbert next door, the old rival.
Photo: Chabe01, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

  1. 1823Louis-Auguste Marchoux commissions the passage from François-Jacques Delannoy
  2. 1826Opening; the name Galerie Vivienne soon replaces Galerie Marchoux
  3. 1840Vidocq lives at no. 13
  4. 1870Bequest of the comtesse de Caen to the Académie des beaux-arts
  5. 1974Listed as a historic monument

Plaques within 250 m

  • 37 Rue Radziwill · 70 m
    FRANÇOIS COUPERIN LE GRAND, 1668-1733, MUSICIEN, COMPOSITEUR, A HABITÉ DANS CET IMMEUBLE DE 1724 JUSQU'À LA FIN DE SA VIE
  • 9 Rue De Beaujolais · 100 m
    DANS CETTE MAISON COLETTE A VÉCU DE 1927 À 1929 ET DE 1938 JUSQU'À SA MORT LE 3 AOÛT 1954
  • 94 Rue De Beaujolais · 130 m
    COLETTE AU BORD DE CE JARDIN A PASSÉ SES DERNIÈRES ANNÉES
  • 36 Rue Montpensier · 180 m
    DE 1939 À 1963 JEAN COCTEAU A VÉCU, TRAVAILLÉ ET RAYONNÉ DANS CETTE MAISON
  • 13 Rue Du Mail · 180 m
    DANS CETTE MAISON/ LE MAITRE HONGROIS/ FRANÇOIS LISZT/ FUT ACCUEILLI PAR/ LA FAMILLE ERARD/ DE 1823 À 1878./ HIRHEDETT ZENÈSZE A VILAGNAK / BARHOVA JUSS. MINDIG HÜ ROKON!/ HUSZAR/ SZOBSASZ
  • 34 Rue De Montpensier · 200 m
    JACQUES CHARON/DOYEN DE LA COMEDIE FRANÇAISE/A VECU DANS CETTE MAISON/DE 1962 A 1975
  • 43 Rue Richelieu · 210 m
    ICI S’ÉLÉVAIT / LA MAISON OU LE / GÉNÉRAL / JEAN-BAPTISTE / DE GRIBAUVAL / RÉFORMATEUR / DE L’ARTILLERIE / FRANÇAISE / NÉ A AMIENS LE / 4 DÉCEMBRE 1715 / ET MORT LE 9 MAI 1789 /
  • 40 Rue Richelieu · 220 m
    ICI / S’ÉLEVAIT LA MAISON / OU / MOLIÈRE / NÉ À PARIS / LE 16 JANVIER 1622 / ET MORT / LE 27 FÉVRIER 1673

Commemorative plaques, Ville de Paris open data (ODbL); transcriptions as published, in French. 10 in all within this radius.

Sources

More places nearby

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