Paris 1er arrondissement · The centre of the centre
Louvre & Les Halles
The geographic and royal heart: the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Palais-Royal arcades, and the glass belly of Les Halles. Grand and central, emptier of residents than it looks, and priced accordingly.
Best for · First-timers who want everything within a walk — and don't mind paying for the address.
Where to eat in the 1er (6)
- Aki€ · Japanese okonomiyakiAn Osaka specialist on the Japanese stretch of rue Sainte-Anne, where the okonomiyaki is griddled on a hot plate in front of you. The same family runs a bakery two doors down if the line is long.
- Higuma€ · RamenOne of the long-standing institutions of rue Sainte-Anne, working an open kitchen and a no-reservations queue. The lamen comes in a gentle chūka-soba broth, the pan-fried gyoza are the reliable add-on, and the bill is about half a typical Parisian sit-down.
- Sanukiya€ · Japanese udon counterSanuki-style udon made with wheat flour from Kagawa, served thick and chewy at a counter where you watch the noodles go into the bowl. The queue down rue d'Argenteuil moves faster than it looks.
- BO&MIE Louvre-Rivoli€€ · Boulangerie-pâtisserieA polished bakery-café a short walk from the Louvre, with more than fifty seats. The pain au praliné and the Madagascar-vanilla flan are the reasons people queue; the croissants use Charentes-Poitou butter and behave accordingly.
- Le Garde Robe€€ · Natural wine bar with foodA narrow natural-wine bar near the Louvre that pours organic bottles and feeds you charcuterie, cheese and a few cooked plates without ceremony. Bottles line the walls; you eat off whatever surface is free.
- Pirouette€€ · Neo-bistroA bistronomic kitchen working offal and vegetables with more technique than the cobbled square outside would suggest. The €15 weekday lunch is the reason to come before noon rather than the dinner carte.
Where to stay in the 1er (2)
- Hôtel Britannique€€ · Boutique hotelAn English-run house off the Seine since 1861, where guests cite the breakfast and the soundproofing ahead of the décor; the Louvre and Notre-Dame are each a ten-minute walk.
- Hôtel de la Place du Louvre€€ · Boutique hotelAn Esprit de France address two minutes from the Louvre's east colonnade, with twenty rooms that look onto the Gothic face of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. Breakfast is laid in a vaulted stone cellar once connected to the palace.
Underground & cool in the 1er (9)
- ★ Librairie Galignani€ · Historic bookshopThe oldest English-language bookshop on the Continent, trading on rue de Rivoli since 1856 and run by six generations of the same family. Dark 1930s shelving holds around fifty thousand titles under the arcade; the fine-arts section is what regulars come for.
- Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection€€ · Contemporary-art foundationFrançois Pinault dropped a nine-metre Tadao Ando concrete cylinder inside the old grain exchange, leaving the 1889 glass dome and its painted frieze of colonial commerce overhead — a juxtaposition the curators don't pretend to resolve.
- Galerie Véro-Dodat€ · Covered passageTwo pork butchers built this neoclassical run in 1826 and spent the money on it: marble columns, brass fittings, painted ceiling panels and a black-and-white tiled floor almost intact. Now home to Christian Louboutin's flagship and antique-instrument dealers.
- 59 Rivoli€ · Artist squatA legalised former squat on Rue de Rivoli — six floors of working artist studios you climb through, meeting painters at their easels, with a ground-floor gallery that turns over every couple of weeks.
- Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain€€ · Contemporary-art foundationAfter forty years on boulevard Raspail the Cartier foundation reopened in October 2025 across from the Louvre, in a Haussmann block Jean Nouvel fitted with five mobile exhibition platforms that rise and sink through the floors on hydraulic rams.
- La Samaritaine€ · Department-store experienceReopened in 2021 after sixteen years dark, restored by LVMH. Frantz Jourdain's Art Nouveau hall keeps its wrought-iron staircase, enamelled-lava signage and the Jourdain peacock fresco — 115 metres of painted birds running below the glass roof.
- Le Duc des Lombards€€ · Jazz clubTwo ticketed sets a night, 19:30 and 22:00, on a stage barely nine square metres, which keeps the room honest and the playing close. The booking runs to touring names.
- Le Tout-Paris€€€ · Rooftop barThe 7th-floor bar at Cheval Blanc, a terrace panorama from Notre-Dame to the Eiffel Tower over the Seine. The bar takes no reservations; a summer-only rooftop, Le Céleste, sits above it.
- Saint-Eustache — Keith Haring chapel€ · Church with modern artworkThe vast Gothic-Renaissance church above Les Halles holds Keith Haring's last work — the 1990 bronze triptych 'The Life of Christ'. Its side chapel was restored and reopened to visitors on 25 June 2026, properly lit for the first time.