Le Marais

Neighborhood · Le Marais (3rd–4th)Paris,France

The district where pre-Revolution Paris survives, narrow lanes and noble mansions hiding cobbled courtyards, spared by Haussmann's boulevards and kept by a century of workshops.

Le Marais is the district where you can still read the street plan of pre-Revolution Paris. You wander lanes too narrow for two cars, past galleries, boutiques and falafel counters, then push open a heavy carriage door and find a silent cobbled courtyard the street never hinted at. Those courtyards belong to hôtels particuliers, the grand private mansions France's nobility built here through the 1600s, once Henri IV laid out the arcaded square now called Place des Vosges. Haussmann's boulevards, which flattened much of old Paris, largely bypassed it. When the aristocrats moved to the Left Bank, the quarter slid into a warren of workshops and tenements, which is the accident that preserved it. Around Rue des Rosiers the old Jewish quarter keeps its bakeries and delis. Elsewhere the mansions hold museums now, from Picasso to Victor Hugo's apartment on Place des Vosges. Sunday is the busy day here, when much of Paris is shut and the Marais is not. It is a neighbourhood best simply walked, without a plan.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Lose the crowds by turning off the main drag — Rue des Francs-Bourgeois clogs on weekends, but the parallel lanes a block on either side stay almost quiet.
Come on a Sunday — unlike most of Paris, the Marais stays open and lively on Sundays, a rhythm it inherited from the Jewish quarter.
Drift north into the Haut Marais — above Rue de Bretagne the tour crowds thin and design shops and galleries take over from the boutiques.
Falafel here is a neighbourhood ritual, not a tourist gimmick — the Rue des Rosiers counters have fed the Pletzl for generations.
Shoot Place des Vosges from under the arcade — the repeating arches frame the symmetry far better than standing out in the open garden.

Things to do

1
Walk the arcades of Place des Vosges
Enter through the arch on Rue de Birague and walk the full covered loop, pausing where the arcade shelters gallery windows and café tables. Then step into the central garden, take a bench, and let your eye travel round the four unbroken sides until you find the two taller pavilions that interrupt the ring.
2
Push open a mansion door
Along Rue des Francs-Bourgeois and Rue de Sévigné, lean on the tall carriage doors of the hôtels particuliers; many are unlatched by day. Step through into the cobbled courtyard behind, tip your head back at the sculpted stone and sweeping staircase, and wait for the street noise to drop to nothing.
3
Eat falafel on Rue des Rosiers
Join the queue at a falafel window on Rue des Rosiers, take the paper-wrapped pita, and eat it as you walk. Afterwards wander the old bookshops and record stores tucked along the same lanes, then turn one street over to the small synagogue Hector Guimard designed.
4
Lunch at the oldest covered market
Slip through the gate of the Marché des Enfants Rouges, trading since the 1600s and the oldest covered market in Paris. Wander the tight aisles between flower stalls and food counters, pick a plate from the Moroccan, Italian, or Japanese stands, and eat elbow-to-elbow at a shared table.