What did kings and queens do with Paris, and what did Paris do with them?
9 walks with different starting points and stories. Compare their maps, stops and duration, then choose where to begin.
Explore these walks
Kings and queens sought to shape Paris, but the city changed their fortunes too. This theme follows the relationship between authority and urban space. The walks connect places associated with monarchy to decisions, conflicts and remembrance, looking at power through its buildings and through human stories that don't fit neatly onto a monumental façade.
In “Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Élysées”: An arch for a royal wedding and the avenues of an erased dynasty show how power was represented and rewritten around the Étoile.
In “The Jewish Marais and its Mansions”: The house of Henry II's daughter adds a reading of monarchy to the walk among the Marais's palaces and communities.
In “The Île de la Cité”: Cross the island where Paris was born, following the last day of Jacques de Molay: a fire at dusk, a bronze king cast with Napoleon's metal, the queen in the Conciergerie, a crown that cost half a kingdom, and a point zero that was replaced in 2025.
Choose from 9 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.
Open a marker to see its page. Use two fingers to move the map on mobile.
Cross the island where Paris was born, following the last day of Jacques de Molay: a fire at dusk, a bronze king cast with Napoleon's metal, the queen in the Conciergerie, a crown that cost half a kingdom, and a point zero that was replaced in 2025.
An arch for a royal wedding and the avenues of an erased dynasty show how power was represented and rewritten around the Étoile.
In the Cour Napoléon you'll hear about the pyramid war, the crooked axis Pei fixed with a king on horseback, and the Monday in 1911 when the Mona Lisa left a gap on the wall.
The house of Henry II's daughter adds a reading of monarchy to the walk among the Marais's palaces and communities.
From the station that's now a museum to the most hidden square in Saint-Germain: a bridge the river carried away, Voltaire's death as told to Catherine the Great, Queen Margot's vow, Mazarin's college, Wilde and Borges, the rescued royal tombs and Delacroix's last studio.
In the garden of the Palais-Royal comes Camille Desmoulins's Sunday, 12 July 1789, told through his own letter, along with the wax busts from Curtius's cabinet and the cannon that fired with the midday sun.
You start at the end: the steps of Saint-Roch, where a young general called Bonaparte brought the Revolution to a close with cannon fire.
By the boulevard, where the Abbaye prison once stood, you remember the September Massacres of 1792 with restraint: two daughters who saved their fathers that night, and a legend that was never proved.
On the outline of the Bastille drawn on the ground you discover how the fortress's archives, thrown into the moat in 1789, were saved, and with them the invoice for a bishop's cage.
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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