Latin Quarter Walking Tour: Discover the Real Paris

We’ll meet on the Île de la Cité, in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral, and set off to explore the oldest part of Paris.
It was here that the ancient Roman city of Lutetia flourished; here, in the Middle Ages, the University of Paris was founded; and here, in 1968, student protests began that would go on to change France — and the world. You’ll also find beautiful examples of Gothic architecture, old shops and cafés with stories of their own, and that unmistakable Parisian atmosphere.

We will see:

• The banks of the Seine
• The Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre (Église Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre)
• The legendary bookstore Shakespeare and Company (Shakespeare and Co), which became a haven for generations of poets and writers
• The medieval Rue Galande (rue Galande), with its historic houses and distinctive Parisian atmosphere
• Boulevard Saint-Germain
• The Gothic residence of the Abbots of Cluny (Musée Cluny), with its monastic garden
• The ancient Roman baths (Thermes de Cluny)
• The Sorbonne University and the University Chapel of St. Ursula, home to the tomb of Cardinal Richelieu
• The Luxembourg Gardens (Jardin du Luxembourg)
• The Panthéon (Panthéon)
• Place de l’Estrapade (place Estrapade), where Emily from Emily in Paris lived
• The Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, with the tomb of Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris
• Lycée Henri IV — the oldest and most prestigious school in France
• Rue Descartes (Descartes) and Rue Mouffetard (Mouffetard), lined with cafés, bars, restaurants, and lively street life
• The house of Ernest Hemingway

We’ll also come across plenty of lesser-known but charming details - the oldest tree in Paris, quirky shop signs, a wonderful little artisanal ice cream spot, and much more.

Please note: to make the most of our limited time, we do not go inside museums, the Sorbonne, the Lycée Henri-IV, or the Luxembourg Garden during this tour. If you’d like a museum tour or a guided visit to the Sorbonne, just let us know — we’ll be happy to arrange it. We can also add a guided walk through the Luxembourg Garden to this tour, with a small adjustment to the duration and price.

For centuries, the Latin Quarter has drawn people with ambition, intelligence, curiosity, and an inner sense of freedom. Here, people studied and argued, believed and doubted, created myths and tore them down. So there is no shortage of things to talk about.

How did students live in the Middle Ages? Why did they sit on straw out in the open air? What did a medieval professor risk by going to a princess’s party? And what is student life like today? We’ll find out - and we’ll also talk about how education in France works today, and how the Sorbonne went from one university to thirteen.

We’ll meet the patron saint of Paris, Saint Genevieve, who proved in practice that you can get much farther with a kind word and a gun a prayer and outstanding diplomatic skills than with prayer alone. We’ll peek into a monastic garden, explore what it symbolised, how it was laid out, and what was grown there. And we’ll see how artichokes grow (depending on the season).

We’ll discover the remarkable journey of Cardinal Richelieu’s head - and the curious circumstances under which his soul supposedly made it to heaven. And along the way, we’ll talk about how he laid the foundations of absolutism in France, bringing the nobility, the Church, and the university under the authority of the crown.

We’ll stop by the legendary bookstore Shakespeare and Company, where little bed-benches are tucked between the shelves - for decades, the shop offered shelter to aspiring writers from around the world. It still does, in fact, though now under rather better conditions. We’ll also hear how a miraculous rescue in the Mexican desert can turn a person’s life upside down and lead them straight to Paris.

We’ll travel back a century to a time when Paris was the cultural capital of the world. We’ll discover what life was like in the Latin Quarter for Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce - it was here, after all, that Ulysses was first published. Which cafés did F. Scott Fitzgerald and George Orwell like to drink in? Where could you run into Walt Whitman, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir?

And of course, we’ll hear plenty of urban legends — the kind that flourished in this dense, intellectual, free-spirited, and cheerful environment. It seems that the very myth of Paris may have been born here. How did this neighbourhood become a symbol of “the real Paris”? What really happened here, and what was invented by the world’s imagination? We’ll be sure to find out.

On all our tours, we don’t just talk - we do lots of fun and interesting things along the way.

• We’ll track down a hidden medieval well.
• We’ll meet the oldest tree in Paris.
• We’ll secure 100% good luck in our studies.
• We’ll find the house where Osip Mandelstam lived as a Sorbonne student and recall his poem about Paris.
• We’ll try perfect macarons at Ladurée — or sample artisanal ice cream in unusual flavours.

And of course, nothing can stop us on this tour from singing, dancing, having fun, light-heartedly flirting with everyone we meet, and simply enjoying the day. Come along!

And if you’ve made it all the way to the end, we have a little secret for you. This tour was created by our dear Anya, who has lived in Paris for most of her life and is hopelessly in love with it. And Anya is the biggest perfectionist on our team. 🙂 So do we even need to say that you’ll get the best tour possible?