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The Arc de Triomphe and the Upper Champs-Élysées
Victor Hugo's night beneath the arch connects a writer's memory with one of Paris's great public settings.
Artists, Writers and Cafés in Paris: audio walks
Who created their work in Paris, and what did they leave behind on its streets?
13 walks with different starting points and stories. Compare their maps, stops and duration, then choose where to begin.
Explore these walksParis's artists and writers shared a city, but each found a different one. This theme lets you choose between neighbourhoods, cafés and places of creative work without reducing a walk to famous names. The routes connect lives and works with addresses: where people worked, talked and developed their own ways of describing Paris.
In “Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Élysées”: Victor Hugo's night beneath the arch connects a writer's memory with one of Paris's great public settings.
In “Palais-Royal and Place des Victoires”: Molière and Buren's columns connect theatre and art with the disputes and memories around the Palais-Royal.
In “The Great Names of Père-Lachaise”: Morrison, Proust and Balzac let you explore the cemetery through the memory of musicians and writers as well as its monuments.
Choose from 13 independent walks in Paris. Open the one that interests you to see its map, stops and approximate duration before deciding. You don't need to do them all or follow this selection's order; each walk has its own starting and finishing points.
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Belleville, from the Boulevard to the Viewpoint
Climb the hill that was once the tavern of Paris: the Courtille carnival, two streets that both claim the last barricade of the Commune, a tavern keeper so famous someone tried to put him on the stage, Perec's street turned into a park, Willy Ronis's viewpoint and Piaf's plaque.
The Canal Saint-Martin and the Grange-aux-Belles
Facing the Hôtel du Nord, you discover that its novel ends with the building being demolished, and that the film was shot with a studio footbridge.
Latin Quarter: from Marat's House to Shakespeare and Company
Then comes the Procope and Voltaire's table, the street where Picasso painted Guernica in five weeks in 1937, and the ramshackle Beat Hotel, where some newspapers cut up by accident changed the way William Burroughs wrote.
Painters' Montmartre: from Rue Cortot to the Moulin Rouge
Next door are the vineyard the locals planted to save a plot of land, and the Lapin Agile, whose donkey signed a painting in 1910 that some people took entirely seriously.
Montparnasse: From the Cafés to the Cemetery
Within a hundred metres of boulevard stand the Rotonde, the Select, La Coupole and the Dôme, and each has its own story: the taxi in Hemingway's novel, the police captain who sorted out papers for foreign painters, the American bar that stayed open all night, the coal store turned Art Deco temple.
Notre-Dame and the Île Saint-Louis
From the garden behind the east end you see the new spire and hear about that April night in 2019, and the cockerel someone found the next day.
From Orsay to Furstenberg along the Quai Voltaire
Behind it, Wilde and Borges on the same façade, the museum of the royal tombs, Balzac's printing works and the square where Delacroix spent his last years.
The Palais-Royal and the Place des Victoires
Molière and Buren's columns connect theatre and art with the disputes and memories around the Palais-Royal.
The Panthéon and the Rue Mouffetard
You head down to the Contrescarpe, where Hemingway lived in two rooms, and along the Mouffetard, the poorest district in Paris according to an eighteenth-century writer, where in 1938 workmen found Louis XV's gold inside a wall.
The Great Names of Père-Lachaise: from the Main Gate to Balzac
Morrison, Proust and Balzac let you explore the cemetery through the memory of musicians and writers as well as its monuments.
Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Luxembourg and the Odéon
You walk down to Saint-Sulpice, where the façade still prays to the Supreme Being and where a novel invented a Rose Line.
From Vendôme to the Opera
It fell in August 1792, and in 1793 a murdered deputy was laid out on its empty pedestal; the city's own panels say the Marquis de Sade spoke, and you find out what he really left in writing.
Paris, before you go
Paris works best a neighbourhood at a time. Combine a walk, a pause and another look: the distances on the map can be deceptive.
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