The Passage des Panoramas stands out for the glass roof that covers its hundred and thirty-three meters, shielding a quiet corridor of storefronts from the busy streets outside. Built in seventeen ninety-nine, it is the oldest covered…
Belle Époque Grand Boulevards
This walk leads you through Paris's most glamorous 19th-century thoroughfares, showcasing dazzling department stores, historic covered arcades, and the architectural theater of the Opera.
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1. Passage des Panoramas
2. Musée Grévin
The Musée Grévin is recognizable by its historic entrance on the Boulevard Montmartre, marked by ornate nineteenth-century architecture and a grand design that has greeted visitors since eighteen eighty-two. This is a private wax museum…
3. Café de la Paix
The Café de la Paix is defined by its ornate, gilded Second Empire décor and its position on the northwest corner of the intersection of Boulevard des Capucines and the Place de l’Opéra. Inaugurated on June thirty, eighteen sixty-two, it…
4. Palais Garnier
The Palais Garnier is distinguished by its massive copper roof and the gold-colored figures that adorn its dome, rising high above the street level. Commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III during the Second Empire, this building was designed…
5. Galeries Lafayette Haussmann
The Galeries Lafayette Haussmann is best identified by its immense neo-Byzantine dome, a structure of stained glass and steel rising forty-three meters above the central hall. Inaugurated in nineteen twelve, the building was the ambitious…
6. Printemps Haussmann
Printemps Haussmann is recognizable by its expansive two-hundred-meter Haussmannian façade and an ornate, stained-glass dome that rises above the interior. Founded in eighteen sixty-five by Jules and Augustine Jaluzot, this department…
7. La Madeleine
La Madeleine is immediately recognizable by its fifty-two towering Corinthian columns, which wrap around the exterior like a marble forest and give the building the appearance of an ancient Greek temple rather than a Catholic church. This…