Welcome to Paris! This loop starts at the Louvre's glass pyramid and crosses the Seine to the island where Paris was born, visiting a revolutionary prison, a chapel made of stained glass and Notre-Dame, before returning past City Hall, a lone Gothic tower and the Louvre's parish church.
Each stop's audio starts by itself when you're within about 100 ft (free and unlocked stops only). Keep this page open with the screen on. Distances are straight-line, so follow the streets and watch for traffic.
Welcome to Paris! We're starting at the Louvre Pyramid, the glass-and-metal entrance to the Louvre Museum, in the main courtyard of the Louvre Palace. It was part of the Grand Louvre project announced in 1981 by President François Mitterrand, and in 1983 the Chinese-American architect I. M.
Pei was chosen to design it. It was completed in 1989. The pyramid is about 71 feet high, with a square base about 112 feet on each side. It lets daylight into the visitors' hall underground.
Three smaller pyramids around it act as lightwells, and there's an inverted pyramid lighting the passages below. Here's a famous rumour: that the pyramid has exactly 666 panes of glass, the number of the beast. The story began in the 1980s, when the official brochure printed that number twice. The Louvre says the real count is 673.
Today the pyramid is a symbol of the museum and a landmark of Paris.
🚶 Walk to the next stop (0.3 mile · ~6 min walk): Head east to the Louvre's square courtyard, the Cour Carrée, then south to the river. Cross the quay at the lights and step onto the iron footbridge, the Pont des Arts. About 6 minutes.
This is the Pont des Arts, a footbridge over the Seine. It links the Institut de France, with its dome, on the Left Bank, to the Louvre's square courtyard, which under Napoleon was called the Palace of the Arts. That's where the bridge's name comes from. The first bridge here was built between 1802 and 1804, under Napoleon Bonaparte.
It was the first metal bridge in Paris, designed like a hanging garden with trees and benches. Crossing it cost one sou. It was damaged by bombing in both world wars and by boat collisions, and in 1979 a barge rammed it and about 200 feet of it collapsed. The present bridge was built between 1981 and 1984, with seven arches instead of nine.
You may remember it for love locks. From late 2008, couples attached padlocks to the railings and threw the keys into the river. By 2014, part of the parapet collapsed under the weight, and in June 2015 the city began cutting off the locks, more than a million of them.
🚶 Walk to the next stop (0.3 mile · ~7 min walk): Follow the river upstream to the Pont Neuf, and walk out to the middle of the bridge, where it touches the tip of the island. About 7 minutes.
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That was the last free stop. The full tour continues with 7 more stops: Pont Neuf, Conciergerie, Sainte-Chapelle, Notre-Dame de Paris, Hôtel de Ville, Paris, Tour Saint-Jacques, Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, each with narration, audio and walking cues.
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The first person to use code FIRSTPARIS at checkout gets the full tour free.
