A guide to the city
The twenty arrondissements
Paris spirals outward from the Louvre in a snail shell of twenty districts. Each has its own character — where to base yourself depends on the trip you want. Here is every one, plainly.
- 1erLouvre & Les Halles17 picksThe geographic and royal heart: the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Palais-Royal arcades, and the glass belly of Les Halles. Grand and central, emptier of residents than it looks, and priced accordingly.
- 2eBourse & Sentier20 picksThe smallest arrondissement, threaded with nineteenth-century glass-roofed passages and, lately, the city's tech and restaurant energy around Rue Montorgueil and the old textile Sentier.
- 3eHaut Marais20 picksThe quieter, cooler half of the Marais — galleries, the Carnavalet and Picasso museums, the Marché des Enfants Rouges, and small designers on Rue de Bretagne. Medieval streets with a contemporary tenant list.
- 4eLe Marais & Île Saint-Louis17 picksPlace des Vosges, the Pletzl's falafel, the Hôtel de Ville, and the impossibly tidy Île Saint-Louis. Beautiful and busy; the streets weren't built for the weekend numbers they now carry.
- 5eLatin Quarter23 picksThe oldest quarter, Roman under the surface — the Panthéon, the Sorbonne, the Arènes de Lutèce, Rue Mouffetard's market hill. Bookish and steep, with cheap eats that have fed students for centuries.
- 6eSaint-Germain-des-Prés14 picksThe cafés where the existentialists held court — Flore, Deux Magots, Lipp — plus the Luxembourg Gardens and the city's densest run of galleries and antiquaires. Expensive, polished, and aware of it.
- 7eEiffel Tower & Invalides15 picksThe Tower, the Champ de Mars, the Invalides dome, the Musée d'Orsay, and the market street Rue Cler. Grand, residential and a little stiff — the Paris of ministries and embassies.
- 8eChamps-Élysées & Madeleine6 picksThe Champs-Élysées, the Arc de Triomphe, the Golden Triangle of couture, and the Madeleine. Built for processions and shopping; thin on the kind of street life that makes a neighbourhood.
- 9eSouth Pigalle & Opéra27 picksOpéra Garnier and the grands magasins up top; below, South Pigalle (SoPi) has become the city's best mid-range eating and drinking quarter, with Rue des Martyrs climbing through it.
- 10eCanal Saint-Martin & Gare du Nord29 picksThe locks and iron footbridges of the Canal Saint-Martin, the South Asian Passage Brady, the Faubourg Saint-Denis food strip, and two big stations. Young, mixed, and where a lot of the good cheap eating is.
- 11eOberkampf & Bastille22 picksNo monuments to speak of, which is the point: the 11th is where Paris eats and drinks at night — natural-wine bars, neo-bistros, and the Oberkampf and Rue de Lappe nightlife. Bastille and the Marché d'Aligre edge sit inside it.
- 12eBastille, Bercy & Aligre11 picksThe Marché d'Aligre, the Coulée verte's elevated walk, the wine-village of Bercy, and the Bois de Vincennes beyond. Residential and underrated, with the best daily market in central Paris.
- 13eChinatown & Butte-aux-Cailles18 picksParis's Chinatown of tower blocks and excellent Southeast-Asian kitchens, the village-like Butte-aux-Cailles with its Art-Deco pool, and a riverfront of street-art murals and barge clubs.
- 14eMontparnasse & Denfert11 picksThe Lost Generation's Montparnasse brasseries, the Catacombs, Parc Montsouris, and crêperies clustered by the station. Quietly residential, with a literary past it wears lightly.
- 15eVaugirard & Beaugrenelle10 picksThe most populous arrondissement and the least touristed — market streets like Rue du Commerce, the riverside Parc André-Citroën with its balloon, and the green ribbon of the Petite Ceinture.
- 16eTrocadéro & Passy10 picksThe best head-on view of the Eiffel Tower from the Trocadéro, the Bois de Boulogne, the Fondation Louis Vuitton and a run of quiet museums. Wealthy, leafy and reserved.
- 17eBatignolles & Monceau14 picksSplit between formal Monceau in the south and the village-feel Batignolles in the north — a covered market, an organic open-air one, a big new park over the old rail yards, and a local restaurant scene.
- 18eMontmartre & Pigalle21 picksSacré-Cœur and the artists' square up top; the back-streets of Abbesses and Lamarck below; Pigalle's neon and the Saint-Ouen flea market at the edge. Steep, photogenic, and busiest where the tour groups cluster.
- 19eLa Villette & Buttes-Chaumont12 picksThe wild cliffs of Buttes-Chaumont, the science-museum-and-music campus of La Villette, the Bassin de la Villette's open-air bars, and a multicultural, working everyday Paris around them.
- 20eBelleville & Ménilmontant13 picksPère-Lachaise, the multicultural climb of Belleville with its Chinese and North-African kitchens and street art, and Ménilmontant's bars and music rooms. The city's most mixed, least polished, most alive eastern edge.