5 stops · 3.1 km
The Left Bank, from the river to the Faubourg Saint-Germain
The walk starts at water level, in the garden at the point of the Île de la Cité, below Henri IV on the Pont Neuf. It crosses to the Left Bank and Mazarin’s library, in the domed college facing the Louvre, then turns into the old streets of Saint-André-des-Arts: the cour du Commerce-Saint-André, with its medieval tower and its memories of Marat and the guillotine, and the quiet courtyards of the cour de Rohan. A few streets on, Delacroix’s last apartment opens onto the garden where he had his studio built. The walk ends in the Faubourg Saint-Germain at Bouchardon’s fountain, the eighteenth century’s most ornate answer to the need for water.
3.1 km · about 41 min of walking
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Square du Vert-Galant1st · 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.
↓ 630 m · 8 min walk
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Bibliothèque Mazarine6th · Cardinal Mazarin’s library, open to scholars since 1643 and still a working reading room under the dome of the Institut de France.
↓ 780 m · 10 min walk
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Cour de Rohan and Cour du Commerce-Saint-André6th · A cobbled passage of revolutionaries and medieval wall, and beyond it three quiet courtyards with the last mounting block in Paris.
↓ 690 m · 9 min walk
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Musée national Eugène-Delacroix6th · 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.
↓ 1.0 km · 13 min walk
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Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons7th · Bouchardon’s palace of a fountain on a narrow street, all marble allegory and very little water. Voltaire was not impressed.
Start: Pont-Neuf 7 300 m · 4 min walk
Finish: Rue du Bac 12 180 m · 2 min walk