Paris's Covered Passages Walk

The stops

1. 01
   Galerie Véro-Dodat

   Opened in 1826 by two wealthy pork butchers, Véro and Dodat, this passage still has its original neoclassical decor: black-and-white checkerboard marble flooring, painted ceiling panels, and brass-trimmed shop fronts.

2. 02
   Palais Royal

   Built in the 1630s as Cardinal Richelieu's private palace, its garden was ringed with arcaded galleries — Montpensier, Valois, and Beaujolais — in the 1780s by the Duke of Orléans, who rented the arcades to shops and cafés to pay off his…

3. 03
   Galerie de Valois

   Galerie de Valois is one of the arcaded shopping galleries lining the Palais Royal gardens in the first arrondissement, created in the eighteenth century as part of the Orléans commercial redevelopment.

4. 04
   Passage Choiseul

   At 190 metres, this 1827 passage is one of the longest in Paris, and it was here that novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline spent part of his childhood, his mother running a lace shop under its glass roof — a memory he later wrote into his novel…

5. 05
   Galerie Colbert

   Built in 1826 right alongside its rival Vivienne, this passage never drew the same crowds commercially and today has no shops at all — it belongs to the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art and the Bibliothèque Nationale.

6. 06
   Galerie Vivienne

   Opened in 1823 and still the grandest of the passages, its neoclassical arcade is paved with an elaborate mosaic floor by the Italian craftsman Giandomenico Facchina.

7. 07
   Palais Brongniart

   Palais Brongniart is the former Paris stock exchange building in the second arrondissement, completed in the nineteenth century and central to the financial world that sustained nearby passages.

8. 08
   Galerie Saint-Marc

   Galerie Saint-Marc is a small nineteenth-century covered passage in the second arrondissement near the former stock exchange district and the passages of Boulevard Montmartre.

9. 09
   Passage des Panoramas

   Opened in 1799, this is the oldest covered passage still standing in Paris, named for two painted panorama rotundas that once stood at its ends, built by the American inventor Robert Fulton.

10. 10
    Passage Jouffroy

    Opened in 1847 directly across the boulevard from the Panoramas, this was one of the first passages built entirely in iron and glass, and it was heated from below by pipes running under the floor — a novelty that made it especially popular…

11. 11
    Passage Verdeau

    The quietest and least touristy of the passages, opened in 1846 as a direct continuation of Jouffroy across the street.

The narration at every stop is in the app — this is the map of where it takes you, with a line on each stop.