Visite guidée : Les passages couverts du quartier de la Madeleine

Paris without its covered passages would no longer be Paris. They witnessed the life of our capital at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Their construction lasted from the end of the 18th century until the Second Empire. In 1850, there were about fifty in Paris. There is a little more 10 left today.

Witnessing a Paris in full boil, they were the precursors of modern shopping galleries but with more charm. They knew the innovations and fashions of the first half of the nineteenth century: the use of metallurgy, gas lighting, cafes, restaurants, theaters. Parisians of all social conditions found themselves there, strolled from shops to boutiques, devised in cafés, had fun in the theater or in cabarets, rested in the baths, looked for a soulmate or a "soul swallow"...

Today, these covered passages have preserved moving traces of this rich past and relive new hours with their restaurants and atypical shops.

This tour is eclectic. We see passages from the nineteenth century but many recent passages in a chic and commercial area as well as markets and a very provincial course. The route goes from Saint Lazare to the Place de la Concorde.