7 stops · 4.6 km
Medieval Paris, from the Marais to Lutetia
This walk runs backwards in time. It begins in the northern Marais at Nicolas Flamel’s charity house of 1407, then heads south to the rue François-Miron, on the line of a Roman road, with its timber-framed houses and Cistercian cellar, to the archbishops’ Gothic town house at Sens and the longest stretch of Philippe Auguste’s wall of around 1200.
From there it crosses to the Île Saint-Louis, past the façade of the hôtel de Lauzun, a reminder that the islands were built up only in the seventeenth century, and on to the Left Bank, where Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre has stood since the 1160s facing Notre-Dame. It ends on the slope of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, in the arena where Roman Lutetia went to the theatre and the games.
4.6 km · about 62 min of walking
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House of Nicolas Flamel3rd · A charity house of 1407 built by a Paris scrivener whom later centuries turned into an alchemist. Its tenants owed him prayers.
↓ 1.2 km · 16 min walk
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Rue François-Miron4th · Two timber-framed houses that look medieval and may partly be, on a street that follows a Roman road out of the city.
↓ 370 m · 5 min walk
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Hôtel de Sens4th · The archbishops’ Gothic town house by the Seine, now a library of posters and crafts, with a cannonball of 1830 still in its wall.
↓ 220 m · 3 min walk
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Wall of Philippe Auguste (rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul)4th · Sixty metres of the wall a king built around Paris before leaving on crusade, now the backdrop to a basketball court.
↓ 600 m · 8 min walk
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Hôtel de Lauzun4th · A gilded 1650s mansion on the Île Saint-Louis, where the young Baudelaire rented the attic and Gautier’s hashish eaters met.
↓ 1.1 km · 15 min walk
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Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre and square René-Viviani5th · A twelfth-century church where the University once met, now Melkite, beside a garden with a robinia said to date from 1601.
↓ 1.1 km · 15 min walk
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Arènes de Lutèce5th · A Roman arena behind a row of Haussmann flats, where Lutetia once watched plays and fights and the 5e now plays pétanque.
Start: Rambuteau 11 280 m · 4 min walk
Finish: Place Monge 7 300 m · 4 min walk