An unforgettable experience is guaranteed as you wander through la Butte aux Cailles, anti-establishment Parisian party district, with it’s restaurants and detached houses that provide an unrivaled Left Bank atmosphere. One of Paris’s favorite playgrounds for street artists, the area also boasts of hidden gems and many other peculiarities.
Butte aux Cailles
Description
The Butte aux Cailles
Practical informations
- Location : Métro Corvisart (line 6)
- Duration : 2h15
- Walk
- Private tour at any date (270€)
Close to Place d’Italie, behind some new apartment blocks, you will find one of the rare parts of Paris that still feels like a village. Quite isolated and therefore well preserved, the streets are paved with cobblestones. It was only urbanised recently, at the start of the 20th century, with detached houses and low buildings, due to the weakness of the ground.
The animated streets, lined with numerous bars, restaurants and shops, have a social, party atmosphere, and are home to a vast open-air gallery of works of graffiti, some by Miss Tick, a famous local street artist.
Charming back streets take the stroller into the past on the tracks of the “little Alsace” with residential homes built like typical ones in the eastern province, or the “little Russia“, with houses built to shelter taxi drivers emigrated to Paris after the Russian revolution.
Other beautiful back-alleys with terraced houses and gardens lead back to the hill where old houses mix with other peculiarities, including one of Paris’ last remaining natural wells, where locals are used to coming to drink fresh water or fill containers.
The tour will also show other charming parts of the neighborhood with colored houses and isolated pedestrian streets, built for quarry workers, but now sought by the highest bidders.
