I have a distant recollection of walking all the way from the Gare du Nord to lunch in the Café Marly by way of the nineteenth-century arcades so beloved of Walter Benjamin. I tried to reconstruct this journey in reverse, starting in the Galerie Vivienne not far from Adrien Gardère’s office:-
Then, I walked up the Rue Vivienne, past the old Bibliothèque Nationale, past the Bourse, to the Passage des Panoramas, the oldest of the arcades, opened in 1800 and with gas lighting by 1816, now a bit shabby:-
Then across the Boulevard Montmartre to the Passage Jouffroy, opened in 1845 and complete with the Hôtel Chopin:-
Across to the Passage Verdeau:-
Ending up in À La Mère de Famille, a chocolate shop which opened in 1761:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Glorious ! Another dimension to The Blog – not just a wonderful addition to Pevsner, but now to Walter Benjamin too ! With the huge bonus, denied either of them, of photographs !
I hoped you would like it. Charles
We should do this …
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Yes, I recommend it, helped by a very good book called The Parisian’s Paris, which describes all the bits of Paris which aren’t overrun by tourists. Charles
A la Mere de Famille justifies it all regardless of Pevsner or Benjamin.
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Thank you for providing the link to this. Charles