Underground & cool · Department-store experience · € · 7e · Eiffel Tower & Invalides
Le Bon Marché
The world's first department store, opened 1852, with structural work attributed to Gustave Eiffel's firm. The draw now is the architecture: glazed roofs and Andrée Putman's crisscrossing 1989 escalators rising through the atrium. La Grande Épicerie next door is a food hall vast enough to browse like a gallery.
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Stand under the central atrium to watch the Putman escalators, then graze the Grande Épicerie without spending a euro.
Getting there
- Sèvres Babylone1012180 m · 3 min walk
- Vaneau10300 m · 6 min walk
- Rennes12330 m · 6 min walk
Around the corner
Lionel Poilâne · 190 m away
Lionel Poilâne was a French baker and entrepreneur whose commitment to crafting quality bread earned him worldwide renown. His father, Pierre Poilâne started a baking business in 1932, creating bread using stone-ground flour, natural fermentation and a wood-fired oven. Lionel took over the bakery in 1970, continuing the traditional methods.
Wikipedia ↗Walks that pass nearby
- Sweet Parisstop 5 of 6 · 190 m
Poilâne
8 Rue du Cherche-Midi. Sourdough bread baked the same way since Lionel Poilâne took over from his father in 1973. The 2 kg miches are imprinted with a giant cursive P that has become the bakery's logo. The wood-fired oven in the basement is original.
Buy a quart de miche (a quarter loaf, ~500g — much more manageable than the whole). The little punitions sablés (butter cookies) at the counter are sold by weight; a small bag is €3 and worth far more.
- Cinemas That Survivedstop 4 of 6 · 410 m
L'Arlequin
76 Rue de Rennes, opened 1934. A classic single-screen art house, with a balcony, brass fittings, and a programmer's reputation for screening films other cinemas won't touch. Saved from closure in 1992 by the comedy duo Pierre Richard and Jean-Claude Brialy, who bought it.
Programming changes weekly; the Sunday-morning ciné-club discussion screenings (in French) are a Paris institution. The balcony is the better seat. The café next door, Le Rostand, was Sartre's preferred Saint-Germain alternative to Café de Flore — mention nothing.
Where to stay near Le Bon Marché
- Hôtel Signature Saint-GermainBoutique hotel€€ · 4 minThe Prigent family's 26-room reworking of an older hotel into something mid-century and colour-blocked, a block from the Bon Marché.
- Hôtel MontalembertBoutique hotel€€€ · 14 minA 1926 address off rue du Bac, long the canteen of the Left Bank's publishing houses, reopened after a Pascal Allaman redesign in restrained 1930s register. Fifty rooms, a Clefs d'Or concierge, the Musée d'Orsay a few minutes' walk away.
- La Villa Saint-Germain-des-PrésDesign hotel€€€ · 17 minTwenty-two rooms on rue Jacob, the bookish Left Bank street that has housed writers since the eighteenth century, redesigned by Bruno Borrione with clean lines and a counter-current pool and sauna in the basement.
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The district · 7e
Eiffel Tower & Invalides — Monumental ParisThe Tower, the Champ de Mars, the Invalides dome, the Musée d'Orsay, and the market street Rue Cler. Grand, residential and a little stiff — the Paris of ministries and embassies.
Best for: Eiffel-view seekers and families who want order and big sights over nightlife.
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