City walk · Paris · France
Victor Hugo
1802–1885 · a real person
an old, grand, tender republican writer; theatrical when he speaks of stone, very quiet when he speaks of his daughter
Read what Victor Hugo says
I am Victor Hugo, and I wrote a novel because a building was dying. They were selling off her glass and whitewashing her saints, and nobody looked up. So I put a hunchback in her towers and made Paris read. Walk with me from this stone star out to the iron tower and the hill beyond, and I will show you what the city kept, what it lost, and what it did with me at the end.
2¼ h · 9.5 km · 10 stops · medium
You’re walking this one before anyone at Walk & Tell has. If something looks wrong, tap Report at any stop — we’ll fix it for everyone after you.
Partly shadedBest time to walk: Start in the morning: the cathedral square, the Champs-Élysées and the steps of Sacré-Cœur have no shade at midday. The Notre-Dame tower climb is ticketed and closed 1 January, 1 May and 25 December; the Musée d'Orsay is shut on Mondays.
The walk
A single line across Paris told by Victor Hugo: from the bronze star in front of Notre-Dame, through the Latin Quarter and the Luxembourg, along the river to the Eiffel Tower, up the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe, and finally up the hill to Sacré-Cœur. It is a story walk with no puzzles — at each stop the guide arrives, tells a chapter, and points out one thing to look at. The thread is a novelist who wrote a book to save a crumbling cathedral, lost a daughter to the Seine, spent nineteen years in exile, and whose coffin lay under the Arc de Triomphe while two million people waited in the street. Two short metro or train hops carry you the long stretches.
Start here
Parvis Notre-Dame - Place Jean-Paul II, Paris 4e Arrondissement
Stand on the open square in front of Notre-Dame, on the bronze star set flat into the paving about thirty paces out from the cathedral's two towers.
Directions
