The Covered Passages
of Paris:
A Complete Guide

Paris once had over 150 covered passages — the 19th century's answer to the shopping mall, built before the department store made them obsolete. Most were demolished during Haussmann's reconstruction of the city. Approximately twenty survive, scattered across the 2nd and 9th arrondissements, in varying states of renovation, habitation and melancholy. I have walked all of them. Some are extraordinary. Some are beautiful in their dilapidation. Here is an honest assessment of the ones that are worth your time.

Galerie Vivienne — The Most Beautiful

The Galerie Vivienne, between the rue Vivienne and the rue des Petits-Champs just north of the Palais Royal, is the finest covered passage in Paris. The mosaic floor — geometric patterns in terracotta and cream — is intact and extraordinary. The glass ceiling diffuses the light into the space below with the quality of a greenhouse. The stucco reliefs on the upper walls are classical and slightly faded and perfect.

The Galerie Vivienne houses, among other tenants, one of the best wine shops in Paris — the Cave Legrand Filles et Fils, which has been in the passage since 1905 — and a rare bookshop specialising in illustrated 19th-century volumes. This is the passage I show first to anyone I bring here, because it establishes what a covered passage can be. Everything else is a variation on this template.

Galerie Colbert — The Grand Adjacent

Directly adjacent to the Galerie Vivienne and connected to it via a shared street entrance, the Galerie Colbert was built two years later and is both grander in ambition and slightly less successful in execution. The central rotunda — a domed circular space that was designed as the passage's showpiece — is extraordinary in its proportions.

The Galerie Colbert is now owned by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and houses research facilities and cultural events. It is open to the public during exhibition periods — check before visiting.

Passage Jouffroy — The Most Alive

The Passage Jouffroy, between the Boulevard Montmartre and the rue de la Grange-Batelière, is the most actively inhabited covered passage in Paris. It has a toy shop that has been in the same location since the 1950s, a séance of antique dealers, a hotel (the Hôtel Chopin, which opened inside the passage in 1846 and is still operating), and a quality of lived-in commercial activity that the more elegantly restored passages have lost.

The floor slopes noticeably from one end to the other — the passage was built on uneven ground — which gives it a slightly dreamlike quality, as though the architecture itself is slightly unsteady.

Passage Verdeau — The Continuation

The Passage Verdeau picks up where the Passage Jouffroy ends — they are connected at the level of the rue de la Grange-Batelière. Verdeau is narrower, darker and less visited than Jouffroy, and it is lined almost entirely with antique dealers specialising in old photographs, vintage postcards, antique firearms and 19th-century scientific instruments.

If Jouffroy is the passage as living commercial street, Verdeau is the passage as antique shop — a place where the 19th century persists not as architecture but as merchandise. The combination of the two, experienced consecutively, is one of the more unusual hours you can spend in Paris.

Passage des Panoramas — The Oldest

The Passage des Panoramas, which opened in 1800, is the oldest covered passage in Paris. It was also the first public space in the city to be lit by gas lamps, in 1817, which made it a destination in itself. Today it is divided between stamp and philately dealers — a trade that has survived here since the 19th century — and a cluster of restaurants. Less atmospheric than Jouffroy or Vivienne, but the most historically significant of the surviving passages.

Galerie Véro-Dodat — The Most Melancholy

The Galerie Véro-Dodat, between the rue du Bouloi and the rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau in the 1st arrondissement, is the most beautiful and the saddest of the surviving passages. Built in 1826, renovated once in the late 19th century, and not significantly touched since. The original mahogany-and-glass shop fronts — many of them now dark and empty — line a corridor lit by gas lamps converted to electricity at some point in the early 20th century.

There are perhaps five or six active businesses in the passage. An antique doll restorer operates from one of them; across the corridor, a violin-maker. The emptiness is not neglect — it is a kind of preservation. Walking through Véro-Dodat is the closest you can get, in Paris, to walking through the 19th century.