Paris 19e arrondissement · Parks and canals
La Villette & Buttes-Chaumont
The 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.
Best for · Park people, families and budget stays who want space and canal swims.
Where to eat in the 19e (3)
- ★ Lao Siam€€ · Thai / LaoA Belleville institution since 1985, founded by a Thai-Lao family and still cooking from the long menu that made its name: green papaya with pickled crab, crisp rice squares in coconut-shrimp-pork sauce, whole fish steamed in banana leaf. The décor is plain; the kitchen is not.
- Le Pacifique€ · Cantonese / dim sumA Cantonese hold-out on rue de Belleville, open since 1983 and built for long tables, steamer baskets and rotisserie meats. The dim sum is the cheap pleasure — order several baskets and the bill stays low — and the kitchen runs past midnight.
- Le Cadoret€€ · Neo-bistro & all-day caféA Belleville corner café by day, a serious kitchen by night — revived in 2024–25 under chef Alice Neman, with a great-value chalkboard lunch.
Where to stay in the 19e (3)
- Hôtel Le Laumière€ · Budget hotelA family-run two-star at the foot of Laumière métro with a rear garden that half the rooms open onto and where breakfast moves outdoors in summer. Ten minutes' walk from the cliffs of Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.
- Moxy Paris La Villette€€ · Design hotelReopened December 2025 under a Saar Zafrir redesign: 259 rooms behind public spaces loaded with neon, graffiti-print walls and a pop-art bear, by the Parc de la Villette and the Canal de l'Ourcq at the cultural northern edge of the 19th.
- St Christopher's Inn Paris - Canal€ · Social hostelThe waterfront terrace is the reason to choose this one over its Gare du Nord sibling: it sits on the Canal de l'Ourcq in the 19th, with a bar that runs late and a chill-out room for the mornings after.
Underground & cool in the 19e (6)
- Parc des Buttes-Chaumont€ · ParkAlphand built this in 1867 out of a worked-out gypsum quarry: a fifty-metre cliff, a suspension footbridge over a lake, grottoes hung with cast-concrete stalactites, and the Temple de la Sibylle on the island above the water.
- Butte Bergeyre€ · ViewpointFive streets on a hundred-metre hump, laid out in the 1920s over a defunct stadium and reached by one road and a staircase. From the railing on Rue Georges-Lardennois the rooftops fall to Sacré-Cœur, with a small municipal vineyard directly below.
- Canauxrama Canal Saint-Martin cruise€€ · Canal cruiseA flat-bottomed boat works its way along Canal Saint-Martin through nine locks, two swing bridges and the long vaulted tunnel beneath Bastille — the slow, mechanical opposite of a Seine sightseeing loop.
- Combat€€ · Cocktail barA bright, women-led Belleville cocktail bar — inventive but unfussy drinks, windows that fold open over the sloping pavement in summer. A local's room, not a set-piece.
- Parc de la Villette€ · ParkFifty-five hectares on the old cattle-market grounds, scored by the Canal de l'Ourcq and studded with Tschumi's red steel follies. The science museum, the mirrored Géode and the Philharmonie share the lawns where the free open-air film festival runs in July and August.
- Planétarium de la Cité des Sciences€€ · PlanetariumThe 360-degree dome at the science museum in La Villette — the working Paris planetarium while the Palais de la Découverte's stays shut — projects immersive sky and deep-space films.