They serve tasty food, and there’s no concert surcharge on drinks – just be sure to drop some cash in the hat for the musicians. On Sunday evenings, the seething bar-bistrot Le Quartier Rouge hosts free live jazz sessions from 6pm. There’s no guarantee what time you will get home. Kick off at the street’s cheapest watering hole and with the longest happy hour, the wild corner bar Le Château d’Eau. For Saturday-night bar-hopping, just head back to Faubourg Saint-Denis which teems with party-goers till the early hours. Weekend shoppers tuck into a tasty croque monsieur, locals crowd round the bar, while market traders and green-uniformed street cleaners stream in and out for a quick coffee. Over at the now trendy food and flea market at Place d’Aligre, Le Penty stubbornly resists gentrification, with the genial patron, Monsieur Jojo, serving their signature tall glasses of steaming mint tea with crunchy pine nuts for €2.30. The gritty Saint-Denis suburb is a world away from the centre of Paris, with a teeming Saturday street market and raucous African diners, but the 12th-century Gothic cathedral never fails to take my breath away.īar Aux Folies, Belleville. Rather than join the crowds at Montmartre’s iconic Sacré-Coeur, I prefer to jump on the high-speed RER underground to the equally impressive Saint-Denis Basilica, where nearly all of France’s kings are buried. There is a wonderful waterside walk along Canal Saint-Martin, with its funky bars and bistros, up to the Bassin de la Villette, where barges moored on the quayside of what is now the Ourcq Canal serve as venues for live concerts, until the waterway enters the giant Villette Park, perfect for a picnic on a sunny day. It is a tranquil oasis where I like getting lost, always finding new discoveries hidden among the narrow maze of winding alleyways lined with thousands of ornate tombs, leaving the tourists poring over their maps to track down the graves of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust and Marcel Marceau. The historic Père Lachaise cemetery is the single Parisian sight I come back to over and over again. And there is always a free temporary exhibition inside the grandiose Hôtel de Ville itself right now, Capitale(s) is dedicated to Parisian street art.įor those who really want to hit the blockbuster museums, on the first Sunday of each month there is free entry (online reservation obligatory) to most museum permanent collections (not temporary shows), from the Louvre’s masterpieces to the fabulous impressionists of L’Orangerie and Musée d’Orsay. While the Grand Palais is closed for renovations, the permanent collection of the equally ornate Petit Palais is free every day, as is the grander Musée d’Art Moderne right opposite the Eiffel Tower. ![]() ![]() My favourites are the Carnavalet, illustrating the history of the City of Light, recently reopened after a splendid restoration and up in Pigalle, the Musée de la Vie Romantique is a hidden gem. The Paris town hall oversees almost a dozen small, offbeat museums which do not charge admission.
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