Castles · Tour

Passage des Panoramas to Galerie Vivienne: Private Covered Passages Walk

The covered passages are the part of 19th-century Paris that the boulevards did not sweep away. This private walk goes through four of them in two hours, with a guide who knows which doors are worth stopping at. The arcades were the first shopping streets with a roof: iron and glass overhead, tiled or inlaid floors underfoot, daylight coming down through the ceiling onto shopfronts that in some cases have barely changed since. They are cut into the middle of blocks, which is why most people walk past the entrances without noticing them. That is the whole appeal. Step through one and the traffic stops, the light changes, and a piece of the old city is still working. The route also takes in the Palais-Royal gardens, the Bourse and the Musée Grévin, which sits at the end of one of the passages. Being private means the pace is yours, and in passages this narrow that matters more than usual. The walk starts outside the Le Peletier metro station.