Underground & cool · Art Deco pool · € · 5e · Latin Quarter
Piscine Pontoise
A 1933 Art Deco municipal pool with a 33-metre basin under a listed glass roof, swimmable from early morning through to a blue-lit nocturne that runs to midnight on weekdays.
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Skip the daytime school crowds and come for the weeknight nocturne — sauna and gym access are folded in.
Getting there
- Cardinal Lemoine10260 m · 5 min walk
- Maubert Mutualité10270 m · 5 min walk
- Jussieu710420 m · 8 min walk
Around the corner
Le Champo · 330 m away
Le Champo, in full Le Champo – Espace Jacques-Tati, is an arthouse cinema in the Latin Quarter of Paris. It is notable for being a favorite haunt of important figures in French cinema history. French director François Truffaut called it his "second university".
Wikipedia ↗Walks that pass nearby
- Cinemas That Survivedstop 5 of 6 · 330 m
Le Champo
51 Rue des Écoles, opened 1938. A favourite of François Truffaut, who watched films here as a teenager and later credited it with his New Wave education. Two small screens, the upstairs salle Jean-Cocteau decorated with frescos. Classified historic 2000.
The upper salle (Cocteau) is a steep, narrow auditorium with vintage seating — uncomfortable but the experience. The cinema does Truffaut and Rohmer retrospectives every winter; check the program. Café Universel across the street has live jazz most evenings.
- Where the Writers Livedstop 2 of 6 · 330 m
Hemingway, 74 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine
Hemingway and his first wife Hadley rented a fourth-floor walk-up here from January 1922 to August 1923 — their first Paris apartment, no running water, no toilet. He wrote In Our Time on the kitchen table. There's a small plaque on the facade.
Look for the green plaque next to the door. The apartment is private; just stand on the cobbles opposite and read A Moveable Feast's opening pages on your phone. Hemingway's local café was the now-gone Café des Amateurs at the bottom of the hill.
- Saint-Louis Loopstop 2 of 6 · 370 m
Bibliothèque Polonaise / Quai d'Orléans
6 Quai d'Orléans. Founded 1838 by Polish émigrés in exile after the November Uprising; Chopin, Mickiewicz, and Słowacki were all members. The library still operates with original 19th-century reading rooms; a small museum on the upper floor preserves Chopin's death mask and Mickiewicz's writing desk.
Free entry to the museum on weekday afternoons (check the door). The view from the quay across the Seine to the Pantheon and the Sorbonne is one of the great Left-Bank panoramas — turn around once you reach the corner.
- Iconic Parisstop 1 of 8 · 460 m
Notre-Dame de Paris
Gothic cathedral begun in 1163. Severely damaged in the April 2019 fire; the spire and roof were reopened to the public in December 2024.
The free entry queue is on the south side; the timed-ticket queue (book online) is on the north. For the front-facade view used in every photo, stand at the small fountain at the centre of the parvis.
Within a few minutes' walk
- Les Bouquinistes de la SeineOpen-air booksellers€ · 4 minRoughly 900 wagon-green boxes bolted to the river parapets, worked by licensed second-hand dealers in books, old prints and postcards. Recognised in 2019 as French intangible heritage, and defended in 2024 when a plan to remove them for the Olympics was overruled.
- La Rôtisserie d'ArgentRotisserie bistro€€ · 5 minThe Tour d'Argent's plain-spoken little sister across the quay, where the spit turns chickens and ducks within sight of Notre-Dame. The poulet rôti with its dripping-roasted potatoes is the whole point.
- Le Buisson ArdentTraditional bistro€€ · 6 minA 1950s room with painted murals near the Jussieu campus, doing seasonal French cooking with more imagination than the price suggests. The weekday formula keeps the university crowd's tables full.
- Institut du Monde Arabe rooftop terraceFree viewpoint€ · 7 minTake the lift to the ninth floor of Jean Nouvel's building — its south wall a grid of 240 photosensitive metal apertures that open and close like camera diaphragms — and walk onto a free terrace facing the apse of Notre-Dame across the Seine.
- Le LoubnaneLebanese / mezze€€ · 7 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.
- Le Grenier de Notre-DameVegetarian restaurant€€ · 7 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.
Where to stay near Piscine Pontoise
- Familia HôtelBudget hotel€ · 3 minRun by the Gaucheron family, with hand-painted sepia frescoes of Paris monuments and flower-decked balconies; a few top-floor ones catch a sliver of Notre-Dame.
- BVJ Quartier LatinNon-profit hostel€ · 3 minNon-profit hostelling since 1948, a few streets from Notre-Dame on Rue des Bernardins: 140 beds in single-sex dorms and a handful of private rooms, plainly furnished, breakfast thrown in, and about as central as a €19 bed gets in Paris.
- Hôtel MarignanBudget hotel€ · 7 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.
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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.
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Confirmed currently operating as of October 2026,cross-checked against 1 source:
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