Gare du Nord to Bastille - Easy Paris Walk

The July Column, Bastille, April 2026

Don’t be a prisoner of the Metro!

I’ve told you previously about walking from Gare du Nord to Palais Garnier. All that Haussmann architecture with structured wide avenues oozing elegance of proportional symmetries, iron balconies and 45 degree sloping roofs.

Well let’s go another way (said every roué ever). Just flip the other walk 45 degrees and let’s plough on down the old Parisian alleyway we call Boulevard de Magenta into the comforting loins of Place de la Bastille.

Yes, I’m basically using a poor sex metaphor to describe a walk. Again. Those that do, do. Those that don’t just make terrible puns and pen walking guides around Paris. So, here we go again, fresh off the Eurostar, avoiding the Metro and walking down to Place de la Bastille.

Route Logistics

Start Point: Gare du Nord

End Point: Place de la Bastille via Place de la République

DIstance: 3.6km (2.2m) / about 50 min at a slow pace

Difficulty: Easy

Cafe/Bars: As many as your companion will let you.

How Awful Is the Area Around Gare du Nord?

Pretty awful. But as a tourist following this guide and heading south, it’s a damn sight better than the poor buggers who bought a cheap hotel room in the area above Gare du Nord (La Chapelle). No Maurice Chevalier in a top hat tap dancing through the wide boulevards here. Yes dear readers, I regret that bit of hotels.com cheap skating.

But, follow my instructions and let me guide you away from the disunited nations of the frenzied and the avaricious crowding your entry point and lead you into the boulevards you imagined when you first booked that weekend break away to Paris to recapture what was once there, or what you hope could be there.

Blvd de Denain to Boulevard Magenta

Set off, like we did last time, head straight out of Gare du Nord, cross the road in front of you, and go down the first avenue you see - Blvd de Denain. As you do so, observe the gardens - newly planted - in the middle of this pedestrianised street but then hurry, hurry away from the too observant locals; hide your wallet, pocket your phone, wrap your Mountain Warehouse jacket tighter around your bum bag . But only for ten seconds. The latter part of Denain is as peaceful as a Normandy seascape under impressionistic skies. Yeah.

Same café, same refuge. This time 50cl of 1664 blanc. Why not? La même chose, monsieur. So after your pitstop at La Chaufferie, follow these precise instructions:

Turn left. Walk straight on.

And that my friends, is basically your instructions to get to Bastille. A masterclass in understatement, no? Pure clickbait that turns just five words of direction into a thousand word solipsistic essay of poor jokes, average alliteration and parti pris prose.

Boulevard de Magenta

As you join this stretch of Magenta, marvel at the fresh urban character. Rejoice at the impromptu street-art spray painted onto historic buildings. But don’t stop too long to avoid being a phoneless Gallic Banksy yourself. Purposely canter through this first section past men watching from the darkened shadows of doorways, eying each tourist for value, for weakness.

“Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world”

And then, like a beautiful Parisienne Spring - and is there anywhere better than Paris in Spring? - Magenta opens out, chills out and becomes that which we seek, Le Paris Profond. Cafes and boutiques spread in front of you like a unabashed lover; flower shops, cafes, patisseries. Vous êtes ici, vous êtes à Paris!

Magenta bleeds into Place de la République which is a major square flanked by those famous Paris brasseries Les Five Guys and Le Bloody Burger King. They stand a greasy guard to Marianne’s haughty Monument de la République in the centre of the square. Let us not forget that the French had a revolution and, before they started getting all gilet jaune on each other’s ass, it was a turning point in history of which they should be justly proud. A century after England, of course, but, yeah, whatever.

Serious Haussmann

Diagonalise the square and head down Boulevard du Temple. We’re now getting into serious Haussmann territory as the traction beam of Bastille draws us ever onwards. Do look at the houses and shops as you pass. The sad fate of the unfamiliar urban tourist is to keep eyes ground level watching out for the pavement crazy dancing oddly, eyes dimly confounded by internal riddles, dancing his dance and doing that jogging trousers falling off the arse boogie.

Huh Tim?

What I mean is, look up and around. There are many fine buildings that stand unobserved unless they are observed. Features and oddities, historical quirks, hide in plain sight. And it’s here, on Temple, that we’re in serious Aristocat territory. Balzac, Condorcet, Zola. All of ‘em. All of ‘em. The spirit of Old Goriot lingers here. De Gaulle, Mitterand, Johnny fucking Hallyday. French as a ripe Camembert or a sexist car ad.

And then, surrounded by mad traffic and repeated zebra crossings (how long must I wait for the green man?) - but avoiding the high speed scooters and electric bikes - we have the Colonne de Juillet at the centre of Bastille. You know, the place where the French started off their revolution by freeing all the prisoners. Back in the day, here in England, we use to cart ours off to Australia. Now we just let them out as we’ve no money to keep them in. The revolution of the penny pinchers.

Little bit of politics. Moving on.

The Beauty of Le Paris Profond

Paris is in the detail, not the broad strokes. It’s the adverts for intriguing looking films you will never see rotated on the hexagon signposts. It’s the ornate signs and orb’d candelabras of the Metro stations. The iron work of the balconies, the regularity of the buildings, the ever changing, ever present sight-line of trees.

But it’s mainly in the cafes spilling out onto the streets as you observe a world - more sensed than perhaps real - of smart sophisticated people in scarfs drinking little coffees, smoking cigarettes, engaging in those ornate flatteries that choreograph the opening moves - cinq à sept - towards an affair. An affirmation of a life lived right. La vie réelle.

Walk to Bastille bitches!

Obligatory Crap Map

Badly drawn map of a walk from Gare du Nord to Bastille

Other Walks / Cities

What about Gare du Nord to Palais Garnier?

Or read more city reviews written from the comfort of bar stool (Antwerp, Bruges, Delft)

Some notes

1) Obviously the 1664 I had wasn’t the first, it wasn’t the last. I find càfe culture - and a constant refreshment of the glass -guides my pen. Like a higher power accessing truth. Here in Paris, there in Krakow, otherwise in Bruges or Antwerp.

2) Why am I in Paris? On business, mate, business. Doing deals you know.

3) The Cafe Flâneur Happy Hour photo. Too hard to resist. Am I a flâneur? Am I a world weary sophisicate leading you on? To where? To whom? Jean-Paul Sartre grasps at my shoulder but is shrugged off. Existential bitch. I travel but lightly.

4) And what the hell is Le Paris Profond? What’s that pretentiousness? Well, I made it up. It takes a foreigner to capture the essence of a place and it takes a jackdaw jobbing writer to steal, adapt and polish a phrase. Yes, Le Paris Profond will do. It fits. I am…I said.