Galerie Vivienne

The Galerie Vivienne is the most graceful of the covered passages of Paris, the glass-roofed shopping arcades that gave the city of the early nineteenth century somewhere to stroll dry-footed between the Palais-Royal, the Bourse and the Grands Boulevards. It runs for 176 m but is only about 3 m wide, and that narrowness is the point: under the glazed roof the light falls softly onto mosaic floors, carved shopfronts and the painted goddesses and nymphs that decorate the rotunda.

It was built in 1823 for Marchoux, president of the Chamber of Notaries, on the site of an old town house, to plans by the architect Delannoy, and opened in 1826 under its founder's name before taking the name of the street it opens onto. Delannoy chose a neoclassical, Pompeian-inspired décor, with half-moon windows framed by reliefs celebrating trade, and the floor mosaics are signed by Giandomenico Facchina and Mazzioli — geometric, restrained, and easy to miss if you are looking at the shop windows. A glazed rotunda with a hemispherical glass cupola marks the turn of the passage. Behind the monumental staircase at number 13 once lived Eugène François Vidocq, the convict who became chief of a police squad of former criminals.

The gallery thrived until Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris drew fashionable commerce to the Madeleine and the Champs-Élysées, and then drifted into a long quiet. It came back to life in the second half of the twentieth century, helped by the arrival of Jean Paul Gaultier and Yuki Torii in 1986, and today it houses shops selling fashion and decorative objects. It has been listed as a historic monument since 1974; the mosaics are best followed from end to end when the passage is quiet.

Getting there

The gallery is in the 2nd arrondissement, with entrances on the Rue des Petits-Champs, the Rue de la Banque and the Rue Vivienne; the nearest métro station is Bourse. Paris-Orly Airport (ORY) is about 15 km away.