Rain-Proof Paris: The Covered Passages

Palais-Royal

The palace gardens that gave Paris its first covered shopping arcades in the 1780s, now home to Daniel Buren's striped columns.

You are standing in the gardens of the Palais-Royal, a palace built for Cardinal Richelieu in the 1630s and later home to the Orléans branch of the royal family. The arcades that run along three sides of this garden are the reason you are here. In 1786, the Duke of Orléans, deep in debt, turned the ground floor into shops and cafés and rented them out. Paris had never seen anything like it: a place to stroll, shop, and gossip, all sheltered from the mud.

Those arcades were the prototype for every covered passage you will walk through today. Before you leave, walk to the southern courtyard to see Daniel Buren's 260 black-and-white striped columns, installed in 1986. They split opinion from day one, which was exactly the point. When you are ready, exit the garden at the northwest corner onto Rue de Beaujolais.

Galerie Vivienne

The most beautiful of the covered passages, opened in 1823, with a mosaic floor, a glass rotunda, and neoclassical goddesses of commerce.

You have just stepped into the Galerie Vivienne, built in 1823 by a notary named Marchoux who wanted to build the most beautiful passage in Paris. Look down first. The mosaic floor under your feet was laid by the Italian artisan Giandomenico Facchina: geometric patterns in terracotta, black, and cream. Now look up.

The glass dome at the rotunda floods the center of the gallery with daylight, and the neoclassical stucco reliefs along the upper walls show goddesses, eagles, and trailing vines, all in a Pompeian style that was wildly fashionable in the 1820s. At number 13, the monumental staircase leads to the former apartment of Eugène-François Vidocq, the ex-convict who became the world's first private detective. He lived here until his death in 1857. The bookstore Jousseaume, near the Rue des Petits-Champs entrance, has been selling books on this spot since 1826.

Take your time. When you are ready, exit onto Rue Vivienne and walk north toward the Grands Boulevards.

Passage des Panoramas

The oldest covered passage in Paris, opened in 1800, still lined with stamp dealers, old postcard shops, and the artists' entrance to the Théâtre des Variétés.

You are inside the Passage des Panoramas, the oldest covered passage in Paris. It opened in 1800, just a year after Napoleon seized power. The name comes from two large rotundas that once stood at the entrance, where the American inventor Robert Fulton displayed panoramic paintings of Paris, Rome, and Jerusalem while he waited for Napoleon to fund his steamboat. Napoleon said no.

Fulton left the panoramas behind and took his boat to London. The rotundas are gone, demolished in 1831, but the passage still feels like a place out of time. In 1817 it became the first public space in Paris lit by gas. The shops today are a peculiar mix: stamp dealers, old postcard sellers, a few autograph merchants.

The Théâtre des Variétés, which opened in 1807, still operates at the northern end; its artists' entrance is inside the passage. Émile Zola set a scene of his novel Nana here in 1867. Walk the full 133 meters. When you reach the Boulevard Montmartre exit, cross the street to the passage directly opposite: the Passage Jouffroy.