The different
Quarters, or districts, of Paris
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The
districts of Paris
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Like any big city,
Paris is not a homogenous block of urban development; an ancient city,
dating back to before Roman times, it is a city that has grown
organically over the centuries, to the point that it has reached today,
a city with an intra-muros population of 2 million
inhabitants, an urban/suburban area of 6 million, and a
metropolitan area of close to 10 million inhabitants.
Paris intra-muros
"Paris", in the strict sense of the term, is an area covering 10,539
hectores or 105.39 sq. km, corresponding to the "departement" of the
Seine (75), the smallest in France in terms of size. This area is
almost exactly delimited by theroute of the Paris inner ring road, or
"Boulevard Périphérique", which circles the city.
Within this area, Paris is divided
administratively into 20 urban boroughs, called arondissements,
conveniently known by their numbers, rather than historic names.
Parisians know the numbers, and often use them to refer to parts of the
city; yet the historic areas of Paris also have names, some of them
well-known, other less. Here therefore is a short guide to
the main "Quarters" of Paris. |
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La Cité - the city:
Part of the 1st District (premier arondissement); La Cité is one of the
the islands in the middle of the Seine, and is the historic heart of
Paris. L'Ile
de la Cité is today home to a number of historic monuments
and administrative buildings, including Notre
Dame Cathedral, and the Sainte
Chapelle. Next to l'Ile de la Cité is the Ile
Saint Louis, another very old quarter, which is more
residential, with shops, restaurants and small hotels.
Louvre
/ Champs Elysées: 1st to 8th arondissements. The Champs
Elysées bisect this quarter from south-east to north-west. This
quarter includes the Louvre
and the Tuileries,
the Place
de la Concorde, the Champs Elysées, the Place
de l'Etoile and the Arc de
Triomphe, as well as several other museums including the Orangerie,
the Grand
Palais and Petit
Palais
Les
Grands Boulevards - the district of the Grand Boulevards
(2nd and 3rd Arondissements, and 8th to the 11th). Running
more or less from the Place
de la Madeleine (8th arondissement) to the Place
de la Bastille (11th arondissement), this is the main
shopping area of central Paris. The heart of the shopping area is the Boulevard
Haussmann, near the Opéra
(RER Auber, Metro Opéra), with some of the biggest department stores.
Le
Quartier Latin The Latin Quarter - Covering part of
the 6th arondissement, and also part of the 5th, this is the
traditional student quarter of Paris, centered on the Sorbonne
and the Panthéon.
The narrow pedestrian streets are full of cafés and restaurants, and
the busy boulevards, particularly the Boulevard
Saint Michel, known as the Boul'Mich, have bookshops,
cinemas and other shops.
Le
Marais - the 4th Arondissement. This district, lying on
the north bank of the Seine, has become a chic residential area; it is
a district of narrow streets, with a lot of attractive historic
buildings, and has become particularly popular since the opening of the
modern art museum and library at the Pompidou
Centre.
Le
Septième - Quartier des Invalides. This district on the
south bank of the Seine is largely administrative and residential. It
contains, among other things, the Eiffel
Tower,
the Hotel
des Invalides, the French National Assembly (parliament
building), the residence of the Prime Minister (Hôtel
Matignon), and the Musée
d'Orsay.
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Pigalle / Montmartre - the 9th
and 18th arondissement. Pigalle is the night-life district of
Paris, famous for its clubs, cabarets and bars. It is also known as the
red light district of Paris. Among the world famous cabaret bars are
the Folies
Bergère and the Moulin
Rouge, popular tourist attractions. It borders on
Montmartre, the hill on which sits the famous Sacré
Coeur church, and the so-called artists quarter of Paris,
today rather commercial.
Le
Seizième - the sixteenth arondissement: over in the west
of Paris, this is the chic residential area of the Paris west end,
where housing is most expensive. A large number of foreign embassies
are situated here. Beyond the ring road (boulevard péphérique) lies
Paris's biggest and most famous park, the Bois de
Boulogne.
Chinatown,
le Treizième: Paris has a large Chinese and south-east
Asian population, which is concentrated in the 13th district, around
the Place
d'Italie. This area has lot of oriental restaurants -
Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodgian, and more, plus exotic shops and
commerces.
Quartier
de la Bastille. The area round the Place
de la Bastille (4e, 11e, 12e) is a popular bustling area
of Paris; it is an area with lots of shops, including all kinds of
specialist shops which have set up in this part of town which is
cheaper than the other end of the Grands Boulevards. This is also a
chic cultural area, with the new Paris Opera, and chic boutiques.
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La
Défense. Strictly lying outside Paris, la Défense, in the
north west of the city, is the modern business district. La Défense
lies at the edge of the city, following the line of the Champs Elysées,
beyond the 16e / 17e arondissements. |
About-France.com
- Paris for free
There are plenty of things to see and do in Paris, without spending a
single centime. They include;
Museums
that are always free:
These
museums are permanently free:
- City of Paris Museum of Modern Art, at
the Trocadéro
- Maison de Balzac, devoted to France's great 19th century novelist.
- Musée Carnavalet - the museum of the history of Paris
- Petit Palais, City of Paris museum of fine arts; a large
collection of great master paintings and artefacts. Located just off
the Champs Elysées
Museums that are sometimes
free:
Free only on the first Sunday of each month:
The Louvre, Musée Rodin, Musée Picasso, Musée d'Orsay and
others. |
Other
free attractions in Paris:
Free
monuments;
Notre Dame cathedral, other Paris churches.
Free to
wander :
Wander along the banks of the Seine, through the parks, through the
narrow streets of the Latin quarter, up to the heights of Montmartre.
Free
travel:
Walk! But if you have a travel pass, then all your public
transport is free.
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Hiring a Velib bicycle.
The cheap way to get round Paris.... if you take care!
 All over Paris,
approximately every 300 yards in all directions, visitors to the city
cannot help noticing bicycle racks, full of identical bicycles. This is
Paris's successful "Velib"
bike-hire scheme, which - if used correctly - can prove an excellent
and cheap way to get around the capital.
You can hire a Velib bike for just one Euro
a day, if you use the system properly: on the other hand,
if you do not
use the system as it is intended (for short hires only), it can work
out very
expensive.
To hire
a Velib, you need a chip-and-pin credit card. On hire, you
will be charged a 150 € deposit, which may well not be recredited to
your card for another two weeks. A day's use of the system
costs just 1 €, which includes as many half-hour hire periods as you
want, during the day. These first half hour periods are always
free, and you can have as many free "first" half hours as you want in a
single day. After that, rates rise steeply to reach 4 € per
extra half hour. So while you could use a Velib for all
your needs for just a single Euro per day, you could find yourself
billed over 80 €, which is far more than a hire car!
If this is not clear, read the two examples opposite. |
Examples:
John and Mary
both hire Velib bikes at 8.30 a.m from near their hotel, and set off
independently for a day's visiting Paris.
John
does not find out how the system works, so takes his bike and spends
the whole day cycling round the city. Each time he stops, he locks the
bike, but never returns it to a Velib rack, not even when he goes for
lunch in a restaurant. He brings the bike back to where he first hired
it at 9.30 p.m. He has thus had a single
hire of 13 hours Cost, a
whopping 96 Euros !! (Some might call this a scam!).
Mary,
on the other hand, uses the system as it is designed to be used; for short trips only.
She picks up her Velib bike at 8.30, rides to the Eiffel Tower (20
mins) and immediately returns the bike to a Velib rack by the tower. At
11.05 she takes another bike, crosses the Seine to the Arc de Triomphe,
and returns the bike to another rack at 11.31, after 26
minutes. During the day, she takes a bike seven times, but always
returns it in less than 30 minutes to a different rack. She never keeps a bike
when not on the saddle. She returns to the hotel at 9.30
p.m. Total day's hire: 7
hires of less than 30 minutes each: Cost,
just 1 €uro. Excellent value for money! |
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