It starts to rain. The umbrellas open, the cafés fill, and you wonder whether to give up and go home. Don't. This is the perfect moment for one of the most enchanting walks in Paris: the covered passages.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Paris built dozens of covered shopping arcades: narrow galleries with glass roofs, connecting one street to another. Before department stores and wide boulevards, they let Parisians stroll, shop and meet without mud or rain. Many disappeared, but around twenty survive, mostly on the Right Bank.
A rainy-day route
1. Galerie Vivienne (2nd). Opened in the 1820s, and perhaps the most elegant of all: mosaic floors, a high glass roof, a bookshop full of old volumes, a tea room. Walk slowly and look down as much as up. 2. Galerie Colbert, right next door. Quieter, with a beautiful rotunda under a glass dome. 3. Passage des Panoramas (2nd). One of the oldest, opened at the end of the 1790s. Stamp and postcard dealers, little restaurants, a slightly worn charm. 4. Passage Jouffroy (9th), across the boulevard. Old toy shops, a bookshop, a hotel, and the entrance to the Musée Grévin. 5. Passage Verdeau (9th), continuing on. Antique cameras, old prints and second-hand books.
How to walk them slowly
- Listen to the rain on the glass roof. Stop for a minute under it and just listen. - Look at the floors. Mosaics, worn tiles, patterns laid down two hundred years ago. - Read the old shop signs. Painted letters, carved wood, brass. - Buy one small thing. A vintage postcard, an old print, a pencil. A souvenir of an afternoon in another century. - Have tea or hot chocolate in one of the passages, and watch people shake out their umbrellas.
Why it calms the mind
The passages are enclosed but full of light, busy but hushed. They give you shelter and wonder at the same time, which is exactly what a rainy day needs.
Something to read when you get home
After your walk, settle in with The First Letter, a short sensory meditation on receiving a letter, free to read or listen to, with a sample of my magazine, "(meditating) On Art". Rain on the window, a letter in your hands.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi