Underground & cool · Jazz cellar · €€ · 5e · Latin Quarter
Le Caveau de la Huchette
A vaulted 16th-century stone cellar run as a swing and bebop club since 1949, with a live band and a packed dance floor every night. Come to dance, not to watch.
Cash at the door. Yes — it's the cellar from La La Land.
Getting there
- Saint-Michel Notre-Dame4RER BRER C150 m · 3 min walk
- Cluny - La Sorbonne10240 m · 5 min walk
- Cité4250 m · 5 min walk
Around the corner
Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche · 60 m away
The Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche is considered the narrowest street in Paris. It is only 1.80 m wide for the whole of its 29 m length.
Wikipedia ↗Walks that pass nearby
- Hidden Parisstop 1 of 6 · 60 m
Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche
The narrowest street in Paris: 1.80 m wide, 29 m long. Documented since 1540, named for a long-vanished sign showing a black cat fishing in the Seine. Pure medieval-Latin-Quarter geometry — a sliver between two buildings.
Find it between 9 Quai Saint-Michel and 12 Rue de la Huchette. Walk through end-to-end (it takes ten seconds). The walls are scratched with several centuries of graffiti — some of it from the 1700s.
- Latin Quarter under 30 minutesstop 2 of 6 · 70 m
Saint-Séverin
13th-to-15th-century flamboyant Gothic church. The double ambulatory behind the high altar is famously elaborate — a 16th-century twisted column called the "palmier" (palm tree) is the architectural showpiece. The bells are pre-Revolutionary, including a 1412 bell that's the oldest in any Paris church.
Free entry. Walk straight to the back of the apse to see the twisted palm-tree column. The 14th-century 'charnel-house' courtyard (cloister) on the south side is the only surviving medieval cemetery cloister in central Paris.
- Phantom Parisstop 2 of 6 · 110 m
Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre
12th-century church on the Left Bank, opposite Notre-Dame. One of the oldest surviving churches in Paris, built circa 1170 — older than most of Notre-Dame itself. Saved from demolition by being too small to bother with.
The square out front (Square René-Viviani) holds the oldest tree in Paris, planted 1601. Inside, the apse and three aisles are original 12th century. Now a Greek Catholic church; usually open in the afternoons.
- Paris Undergroundstop 3 of 6 · 120 m
Crypte archéologique du Parvis Notre-Dame
Beneath the cathedral square: foundations of Roman Lutetia, medieval streets, and the original Hôtel-Dieu hospital. Excavated 1965 when the city built an underground car park; turned into a museum that almost no one visits.
Entrance is in the small staircase on the parvis itself, in the centre near the bronze "Point Zéro" disc. Combined ticket with the Carnavalet Museum is good value. Allow 45 min — small but extraordinary, and never crowded.
Within a few minutes' walk
- Shakespeare and CompanyIndependent bookshop€ · 1 minGeorge Whitman's English-language bookshop, opened in 1951 opposite Notre-Dame. Narrow stairs, beds among the shelves where 'Tumbleweeds' have slept since the 1950s, a piano, a wishing well and a reading library upstairs — a bookshop and a stubborn anachronism at once.
- Caveau des OubliettesJazz cellar€€ · 2 minA 12th-century stone cellar, once a dungeon, given over to nightly jam sessions rather than ticketed billings — soul on Wednesdays, jazz-funk on Thursdays and Sundays. Sets run on a fixed clock at 21:45, 22:45 and 23:45.
- Le Grenier de Notre-DameVegetarian restaurant€€ · 3 minFrance's oldest vegetarian dining room, running since 1978 a few steps from the cathedral, and it has outlived most of the fashions that came after it. Lentil burgers crowned with Bleu d'Auvergne, gratins, and a mango-and-avocado tartare; vegan and gluten-free marked plainly.
- Le LoubnaneLebanese / mezze€€ · 4 minA Latin Quarter Lebanese kitchen run by the same family since 1984, where the case to make is for the cold-and-hot mezze spread — tabbouleh, kibbeh, the lot — rather than a single plate.
- Hôtel Dame des ArtsRooftop-view design hotel€€€ · 5 minA board-formed concrete building at the Danton–Saint-Germain corner, interiors by Raphael Navot, opened 2023. The seventh-floor terrace gives a true 360 — Eiffel Tower one way, Notre-Dame the other.
- Hôtel MarignanBudget hotel€ · 6 minA family-owned holdout with a guest kitchen and free laundry — economies rare in the 5th — though there is no lift and the rooms are slight.
Landmarks nearby
The district · 5e
Latin Quarter — The student hillThe oldest quarter, Roman under the surface — the Panthéon, the Sorbonne, the Arènes de Lutèce, Rue Mouffetard's market hill. Bookish and steep, with cheap eats that have fed students for centuries.
Best for: Readers, walkers, and anyone who wants character and value over polish.
Everything we've verified in the 5e →How we verified this
Confirmed currently operating as of August 2026,cross-checked against 2 sources:
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