Underground & cool · Covered passage · € · 2e · Bourse & Sentier
Passage des Panoramas
The oldest covered passage in Paris (1799): a glass-roofed gallery of stamp dealers and old engravers, now lined with good little bistros and wine bars. The rainy-afternoon move.
Booking through this link may earn par.is a commission. Same price as anywhere.
Combine it with Galerie Vivienne nearby; individual shops keep their own hours.
Getting there
- Grands Boulevards89200 m · 4 min walk
- Richelieu Drouot89240 m · 5 min walk
- Bourse3320 m · 6 min walk
Walks that pass nearby
- Painters' Viewsstop 3 of 7 · 20 m
Pissarro at Boulevard Montmartre
Camille Pissarro spent winter 1897 in room 9 of the Grand Hôtel de Russie, on the corner of Boulevard Montmartre and Rue Drouot, painting fourteen canvases of the boulevard from the window — the same view at different times of day, in different weather, a series most museums now own one of.
Stand on the south side of Boulevard Montmartre between Rue Drouot and Rue Vivienne, looking east. The hotel building is no. 1 Boulevard Montmartre — now offices, but the third-floor windows are the painting's vantage. The Passage des Panoramas entrance is right next to it.
- Covered Passagesstop 5 of 6 · 30 m
Passage Jouffroy
1845. The first arcade with underfloor heating and the first to be entirely iron-and-glass. Houses the Musée Grévin (wax museum) and Hôtel Chopin, where the composer never actually stayed despite the name.
Cross Boulevard Montmartre directly opposite the Panoramas exit — Jouffroy's entrance is at no. 10. Pain d'Épices toy shop at no. 29 is unchanged since 1980 and worth ten minutes alone. Walk all the way through.
- Bouillons & Brasseriesstop 1 of 6 · 100 m
Bouillon Chartier
7 Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, opened 1896. Still the original recipe: long communal tables, paper tablecloths, waiters in long aprons writing your order on the cloth itself. Three-course dinners under €20. The interior is classified historic.
No reservations — go at 17:30 (opening) or after 21:30 to skip the worst queue. Communal seating: you'll share a table with strangers, which is the whole point. Don't expect refined cooking; expect oeuf mayonnaise, hachis parmentier, and a crème caramel for €15 total.
- Paris-1900stop 5 of 6 · 100 m
Bouillon Chartier
1896. The dining room — coat racks, brass luggage shelves above the booths, beveled mirrors, painted ceiling — is unchanged since opening. Even the system of writing your bill on the paper tablecloth dates from 1896.
Stand at the entrance just inside the courtyard for thirty seconds and look at the room before you're seated. Best photo of the room is from the doorway. Order anything cheap; you're paying for the dining room, not the dish.
Within a few minutes' walk
- Bouillon Chartier (Grands Boulevards)Bouillon€ · 2 minAn 1896 dining hall with bowtied waiters who still write your order on the paper cloth. Pot-au-feu or steak tartare, for the old cheap-Paris ritual.
- Passage VerdeauCovered passage€ · 5 minThe 1847 northern end of the Panoramas-Jouffroy-Verdeau chain, and the quietest of the three. Its glass canopy lights a row of antiquarian booksellers and print dealers specialised down to the object: old cameras, postcards, engravings.
- Le MesturetTraditional bistro€€ · 7 minA seven-days-a-week bistro near the old Bourse where the kitchen cooks blanquette de veau and bœuf bourguignon straight, with no irony attached. The set menus do most of the work of keeping the bill sane.
- Rex ClubElectronic club€€ · 8 minParis's longest-running room for techno and house, running its programming through a Funktion-One rig that rewards the people who came for the sound rather than the scene. Long sets that don't bother with last call until daylight.
- Hôtel de NellDesign hotel€€€ · 8 minThirty-three rooms on a quiet street off the Grands Boulevards, designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte in sand tones, oak and stone — hushed where the neighbourhood is loud.
- Le Grand Rex — Les Étoiles du RexHistoric cinema (backstage tour)€€ · 8 minEurope's largest auditorium sits behind a 1932 Art Deco facade. The self-guided tour moves through the building's machinery — projection booth, the 2,700-seat grande salle, the special-effects room — narrated as a mock film shoot.
Where to stay near Passage des Panoramas
- Hôtel ChopinBudget hotel (in a passage)€ · 1 minBuilt into the glass-roofed Passage Jouffroy in 1846, so no room faces a street — the quietest look over rooftops, and the Musée Grévin shares the arcade.
- Hôtel Filigrane & SpaBoutique hotel & spa€€€ · 1 minA 2025 opening on rue Vivienne behind the old Bourse, worked in ink blues and forest greens. The distinction is below ground: a private indoor pool, hammam and sauna you can book by the 45-minute slot — uncommon at this size on the Right Bank.
- The Hoxton, ParisDesign hotel€€ · 7 minAn 18th-century residence turned design-led social hub in Sentier, with a leafy courtyard wine bar, an all-day brasserie and a speakeasy below.
Booking through this link may earn par.is a commission. Same price as anywhere.
The district · 2e
Bourse & Sentier — Covered passages and start-upsThe smallest arrondissement, threaded with nineteenth-century glass-roofed passages and, lately, the city's tech and restaurant energy around Rue Montorgueil and the old textile Sentier.
Best for: Eaters and drinkers who want to walk home; central without the Louvre crowds.
Everything we've verified in the 2e →How we verified this
Confirmed currently operating as of October 2026,cross-checked against 2 sources:
The full verification ledger — everything checked this week, and what we marked closed →More underground & cool, nearest first
par.is is a living map of Paris. Every place here is a real, currently operating destination — re-checked over time and removed the moment we can no longer confirm it's open. No paid placements, no scraped directory: just opinionated picks worth your trip.