Underground & cool · Contemporary-art foundation · €€ · 1er · Louvre & Les Halles
Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain
After 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.
Booking through this link may earn par.is a commission. Same price as anywhere.
Go Tuesday evening — it stays open to 22:00; the moving platforms are best watched from the upper level.
Getting there
- Palais Royal - Musée Du Louvre1750 m · 1 min walk
- Louvre Rivoli1330 m · 6 min walk
- Pyramides714440 m · 8 min walk
Around the corner
Louvre Inverted Pyramid · 120 m away
The Louvre Inverted Pyramid is a skylight constructed in the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall in front of the Louvre Museum in France. It may be thought of as a smaller sibling of the more famous Louvre Pyramid proper, yet turned upside down: its upturned base is easily seen from outside.
Wikipedia ↗Walks that pass nearby
- Paris Undergroundstop 6 of 6 · 120 m
Pyramide inversée
Inverted glass pyramid in the Carrousel du Louvre underground mall, 1993. Designed by I. M. Pei as the visual counterpart to his big pyramid above ground. The tip almost touches a small stone pyramid below — the meeting point famous from The Da Vinci Code.
Free, no ticket, no museum visit needed — enter the Carrousel mall via 99 Rue de Rivoli or directly from Métro Palais Royal. Walk into the central rotunda; you'll see it. Best photographed at midday when daylight comes through the top.
- Iconic Parisstop 3 of 8 · 200 m
Louvre Pyramid
I. M. Pei's 1989 glass pyramid in the Cour Napoléon — the main entrance to the museum and a permanent argument with traditionalists.
If you're not going inside the museum, walk through the small archway under the north wing of the Cour Carrée — fewer tourists and the symmetry of the courtyard is the secret photograph. The southern arch frames the pyramid perfectly.
- Secret Gardensstop 2 of 6 · 290 m
Jardin du Palais-Royal
1633. The interior garden of the former royal palace, surrounded by 17th-century arcaded buildings. Quiet and almost monastic — the city's most underrated central garden. The black-and-white striped Buren columns at the south entrance (1986) are controversial but iconic.
Enter from the south through the Cour d'Honneur (Buren columns). Walk the perimeter under the arcades — the small shops are antique stamp dealers, vintage perfume merchants, and the city's best vintage tin-toy collector at no. 22 Galerie de Montpensier. The fountain in the centre and the rose garden at the north end are the picnic spots.
- Covered Passagesstop 1 of 6 · 330 m
Galerie Véro-Dodat
Opened 1826 by two charcutiers (Véro and Dodat) who'd just made fortunes in cured meat. Black-and-white marble floor, 38 mahogany shop fronts, gas lamps converted to electric in 1923. One of the best-preserved arcades in the city.
Enter from Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, opposite the Bourse de Commerce. The Christian Louboutin atelier is at no. 19 — discreet, worth a look through the window. Exit at Rue de Croix-des-Petits-Champs and walk north.
Within a few minutes' walk
- Galerie Véro-DodatCovered passage€ · 5 minTwo 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.
- BO&MIE Louvre-RivoliBoulangerie-pâtisserie€€ · 6 minA 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.
- SanukiyaJapanese udon counter€ · 7 minSanuki-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.
- Bourse de Commerce — Pinault CollectionContemporary-art foundation€€ · 7 minFrançois 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.
- Le Garde RobeNatural wine bar with food€€ · 8 minA 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.
- Hôtel de la Place du LouvreBoutique hotel€€ · 8 minAn 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.
The district · 1er
Louvre & Les Halles — The centre of the centreThe 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.
Everything we've verified in the 1er →How we verified this
Confirmed currently operating as of August 2026,cross-checked against 1 source:
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