The Paris Guide

Descriptions of the arrondissements of Paris

Listed by arrondissement...
1st || 2nd || 3rd || 4th || 5th || 6th || 7th || 8th || 9th || 10th

1st Arrondissement

(Right bank, Musée du Louvre / Palais Royal / Les Halles)

"I never knew what a palace was until I had a glimpse of the Louvre," wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne. One of the world's greatest art museums (some say the greatest), the Louvre, one a royal residence, still lures all visitors to Paris to the 1st arrondissement. Here are many of the elegant addresses of Paris, the rue de Rivoli, with the Jeu de Paume and Orangerie on raised terraces. Walk through its Jardin des Tuileries, the most formal garden in Paris (originally laid out by Le Nôtre, gardener to Louis XIV). Pause to take in the classic beauty of the place Vendôme, opulent, wealthy, and home of the Ritz Hotel. Jewelers and art dealers are in plentiful supply, and memories of Chopin are evoked on the square where he died. Zola's "the belly of Paris" (Les Halles) is no longer the food and meat market of Paris (traders moved to a new, more accessible suburb, Rungis), but is today Forum des Halles, a center of shopping, entertainment, and culture.
 

More information on famous attractions and historical sights here.

2nd Arrondissement

(Right bank, La Bourse)

Home to the Bourse (stock exchange), this Right Bank district lies mainly between the Grands Boulevards and the rue Etienne Marcel. From Monday through Firday, the shouts of brokers echo across the place de la Bourse until it's time to break for lunch, when the movers and shakers of French capitalism bring their hysteria into the restaurants of the district. Much of the eastern end of the arrondissement (Le Sentier) is devoted to the wholesale outlets of the Paris garment district, where thousands of garments are sold (usually in bulk) to buyers from clothing stores throughout Europe. :Everything that exists elsewhere exists in Paris," wrote Victor Hugo in Les Misérables, and if you take on this district, you'll find ample evidence to support his bold claim. Little magnets of true beauty and value do exist amid the often overwhelming commercialism, none finer than the Musée Cognacq-Jay, 25 blvd. des Capucines. Ernest Cognacq created the Samaritaine chain fo stores, but also had time to collect some of the world's most exquisite art. His collection is a jewel box brimming with treasures, featuring work by almost every artist from Watteau to Fragonard.
 

More information on famous attractions and historical sights here.

3rd Arrondissement

(Right bank, Le Marais)

This district embraces much of Le Marais (the swamp), one of the best loved of the old Right Bank neighborhoods. Allowed to fall into decades of seedy decay, Le Marais has now made a comeback, although perhaps it will never again enjoy the grand opulence of its aristocratic heyday during the 17th century. Over the centuries, kings have called Le Marais home, and its salons have resounded with the witty, often devastating remarks of Racine, Voltaire, Molière, and Madame de Sévigné. One of the district's chief attractions today is Musée Picasso, stuffed with treasures that the Picasso estate had to turn over to the French government in lieu of the artist's astronomical death duties. Forced donation or not, it's one of the world's great repositories of 20th century art.
 

More information on famous attractions and historical sights here.

4th Arrondissement

(Right bank, Ile de la Cité / Ile de St-Louis / Centre Pompidou)

At times it seems as if the 4th has it all: not only Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cité, but Ile St-Louis, with its aristocratic town houses, courtyards, and antique shops. Ile St-Louis, a former cow pasture and dueling ground, is home to dozens of 17th century mansions and 6,000 lucky louisiens, its permanent residents. Voltaire found it "the second best" address in all the world, citing the straits of the Bosporus separating Europe from Asia as number one. Of course, the whole area is touristy and overrun. On the Ile de la Cité, forget the "I Love Paris" bumper stickers and seek out Ile St-Louis's two gems of gothic architecture, La Saint Chapelle and Notre Dame, a majestic and dignified structure that, according to the poet e. e. cummings, doesn't budge an inch for all the idiocies of this world.
The heart of medieval Paris, the 4th evokes memories of Danton, Robespierre, and even of Charlotte Corday, who stabbed Marat in his bath. Here you not only get France's finest bird and flower markets, but the nation's law courts. Though Balzac described the courts as a "cathedral of chicanery," they have a long tradition of dispensing justice, French-style: it was here that Marie Antoinette was sentenced to death in 1793. If all this weren't enough, the 4th is also home to the Centre Georges Pompidou, now one of the top three tourist attractions of France, partly because of its National Museum of Modern Art. Finally, after all this pomp and glory, you can retreat to the place des Vosges, a square of perfect harmony and beauty where Victor Hugo lived from 1832 to 1848 and penned many of his famous masterpieces.
 

More information on famous attractions and historical sights here.

5th Arrondissement

(Left bank, Latin Quarter)

The Quartier Latin (Latin Quarter) is the intellectual heart and soul of Paris. Bookstores, schools, churches, smoky jazz clubs, student dives, Roman ruins, publishing houses, and, yes, expensive and chic boutiques, characterize the district. Discussions of Artaud or Molière over long lingering cups of coffee are not just a cliché. They really happen. Beginnning with the founding of the Sorbonne in 1253, the quartier was called Latin because all students and professors spoke the scholarly language. As the traditional canter of what was called "bohemian Paris," it formed the setting for Henri Murger's novel Scènes de la vie de Bohème (later the Puccini opera, La Bohème).
You'll follow in the footsteps of Descartes, Verlaine, Camus, Sartre, James Thurber, Elliot Paul, and Hemingway as you explore this historic district. FOr sure, the old Latin quarter is gone forever. Changing times have brought Greek, Moroccan, and Vietnamese immigrants, among others, hustling everything from couscous to fiery hot spring rills and souvlaki. The 5th also borders the Seine, and you'll want to stroll along quai de Montebello, inspecting the inventories of the bouquinistes who sell everything from antique Daumier prints to yellowing copies of Balzac's Père Goroit in the shadow of Notre Dame. The 5th also stretches down to the Pantéon, which was constructed by a grateful Louis XV after he'd recovered from the gout and wanted to do something nice for Ste-Geneviève. It's the dank, dark resting place of Rousseau, gambetta, Emile Zola, Louis Braille, Victor Hugo, Voltiare, and Jean Moulin, the World War II Resistance leader who was tortured to death by the Gestapo.
 

More information on famous attractions and historical sights here.

6th Arrondissement

(Left bank, St-Germain / Luxembourg Gardens)

This is the heartland of Paris publishing and, for some, the most colorful quartier of the Left Bank, where waves of earnest young artists still emerge from the famous Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Strolling the boulevards of the 6th, including St-Germain, has its own rewards, but the secret of the district lies in discovering its narrow street with an unwrapped loaf of country sourdough bread form the wood-fired ovens of Poilane, the world's most famous baker, at 8 rue du Cherche-Midi. Everywhere you turn in the district, you encounter famous historical and literary associations, none more so than on rue Jacob. At 7 rue Jacob, Racine lived with his uncle as a teenager; Richard Wagner resided at 14 rue Jacob from 1841 to 1842; Ingres once lived at 27 rue Jacob (now it's the offices of the French publishing house, Editions de Seuil); and Hemingway once occupied a tiny upstairs room at no. 44. Today's "big name" is likely to be filmmaker Spike Lee checking into his favorite, La Villa Hotel, at 29 rue Jacob.
Delacroix, whom Baudelaire called "a volcanic crater artistically concealed beneath bouquets of flowers," kept his atelier in the 6th, and George Sand and her lover, Frédéric Chopin, used to visit him there to have their portraits done. His studio is now open to the public. Rue Monsieur-le-Prince has historically been a popular street for Paris's resident Americans, once frequented by Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Wright, James McNeill Whistler, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and even Oliver Wendell Holmes. The 6th even takes in the Luxembourg Gardens, a 60-acre playground where Isadora Duncan went dancing in the predawn hours and a destitute writer, Ernest Hemingway, went looking for pigeons to cook for lunch while pushing a baby carriage full of his hunting trophies back to his humble flat.
 

More information on famous attractions and historical sights here.

7th Arrondissement

(Left bank, Eiffel Tower / Musée d'Orsay)

Paris's most famous symbol, the Eiffel Tower, dominates Paris and especially the 7th, a Left Bank district of respectable residences and government offices. Part of the St-Germain neighborhood is included here as well. The tower is now one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world, despite the fact that many Parisians (most notably some of its nearest neighbors) hated it when it was unveiled in 1889. Many of the most imposing monuments of Paris are in the 7th, including the Hotel des Invalides, which contains both Napoléon's Tomb and the Musée de l'Armée. But there is much hidden charm here as well. Who has not walked these often narrow streets before you? Your predecessors include Picasso, Manet, Ingres, Baudelaire, Wagner, Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, even Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, and Tennessee Williams.
Rue de Bac was home to the swashbuckling heroes of Dumas's The Three Musketeers, and to James McNeill Whistler, who, after selling Whistler's Mother, moved to 110 rue de Bac, where he entertained the likes of Degas, Henry James, Manet, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Auguste Rodin lived at what is now the Musée Rodin at 77 rue de Varenne until his death in 1917.
Even visitors with no time to thoroughly explore the 7th at least rush its second major attraction (after the Eiffel Tower), the Musée d'Orsay, the world's premier showcase of 19th century French art culture. The museum is housed in the old Gare d'Orsay, which Orson Welles used in 1962 as a setting for his film The Trial, based on the book by Franz Kafka.
 

More information on famous attractions and historical sights here.

8th Arrondissement

(Right bank, Champs-Elysées / Madeleine)

The 8th is the heart of the Right Bank and its prime showcase is Champs-Elysées, which links the Arc de Triomphe with the delicate obelisk on place de la Concorde. Here you'll find the fashion houses, the most elegant hotels, expensive restaurants and shops, and the most fashionably attired Parisians. Stretching grandly from the Arc de Triomphe to the place de la Concorde, the Champs-Elysées has long been cited as the perfect metaphor of the Parisian love of symmetry. However, by the 1980's, it had become a garish strip, with too much traffic, too many fast food joints, and too many panhandlers. In the 90's, the Gaulist mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, launched a massive cleanup. The major change has been in broadened sidewalks, with new rows of trees planted. The old glory? Perhaps it's gone forever, but what an improvement.
Whatever it is you're looking for, in the 8th it will be the city's "best, grandest, and most impressive": It has the best restaurant in Paris (Taillevent); the sexiest strip joint (Crazy Horse Saloon); the most splendid square in all of France (place de la Concorde); the grandest hotel in France (The Crillon); the most impressive triumphal arch on the planet (L'Arc de Triomphe); the world's most expensive residential street (avenue Montaigne); the world's oldest Métro station (Franklin-D-Roosevelt); the most ancient monument in Paris (Obelisk of Luxor, 3300 years old), and it goes on and on.
 

More information on famous attractions and historical sights here.

9th Arrondissement

(Right bank, Opéra Garnier / Pigalle)

Everything from the Quartier de l'Opéra to the strip and clip joints of Pigalle (the infamous "Pig Alley" for the GI's of World War II) falls within the 9th. When Balzac was writing his novels, the author considered the most elitist address for his socially ambitious characters as the 9th's chaussée d'Antin. Radically altered by the 19th century urban redevelopment projects of Baron Haussmann, the grands boulevards radiating through the district are among the most obvious of the baron's labors. Although the chaussée d'Antin is no longer particularly elegant, having been supplanted by some of Paris's largest department stores, the 9th endures, even if fickle fashion now prefers other addresses. Over the decades, the 9th has been celebrated in literature and song for the music halls that brought gaiety to the city. Marie Duplessis, known as Marguerite Gautier, heroine of La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas the younger (1824-95)(a character made famous by Greta Garbo's portrayal I the film Camille), died at 17 blvd de la Madeleine. Boulevard des Italiens is the site of the Café de la Paix, opened in 1856 and once the meeting place of the Romantic poets, including Théophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset. Later, Charles de Gaulle, Marlene Dietrich, and two million Americans started showing up.
At Place Pigalle, gone is the Café La Nouvelle Athènes, where Degas, Pissarro, and Manet used to meet. Today, you're likely to encounter a few clubs where the action gets really down and dirty. Other major attractions include the Folies Bergère, where cancan dancers have been high-kicking it since 1868, and French entertainers such as Mistinguett, Edith Piaf, and Maurice Chevalier have appeared along with Josephine Baker, once hailed as "the toast of Paris." More than anything, it was the Opéra Garnier (Paris Opera House) that made the 9th the last hurrah of Second Empire opulence. Renoir hated it, but several generations later, Chagall did the ceilings. Pavlova danced Swan Lake here, and Nijinsky took the night off to go cruising.
 

More information on famous attractions and historical sights here.

10th Arrondissement

(Right bank, Gare du Nord / Gare de l'Est)

Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est, along with movie theaters, porno houses, and dreary commercial zones make the 10th one of the least desirable arrondissements for living, dining, and sightseeing in Paris. Try to avoid the 10th, except for two longtime favorite restaurants, Brasserie Flo at 7 cour des Petites-Ecuries (go there for its la formidable choucroute, a heap of sauerkraut garnished with everything), and Julien, 16 rue du Faubourg St-Denis (called the poor man's Maxim's because of its belle époque interiors and moderate prices).

Information adapted from Frommer's: Paris From $60 A Day, © 1997.

Questions? Comments? Send 'em to [email protected]
Go on back to Paris Guide Index