Le Marais

The Marais means "the swamp," and that's exactly what it was until the Knights Templar drained it in the 13th century. It became the aristocratic heart of Paris in the 17th century, fell into decay, nearly got bulldozed by Haussmann in the 19th century, and reinvented itself as the city's most vibrant neighborhood in the late 20th century. Its survival is one of the great preservation stories in urban history.

What saved it was André Malraux's historic preservation law of 1962, the first of its kind in France. By then the Marais was a working-class district, its grand hôtels particuliers (private mansions) carved into apartments and workshops. The restoration revealed extraordinary architecture that had been hidden under centuries of grime and ad-hoc construction. Today, many of those mansions house museums: the Carnavalet (Paris history), the Picasso Museum, and the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (a wonderfully eccentric hunting museum).

The Marais is also the historic center of Jewish life in Paris. Rue des Rosiers is the heart of the Pletzl — the old Jewish quarter — where you'll find some of the best falafel in Europe. L'As du Fallafel has had a line out the door since 1979, and the debate over whether it or Mi-Va-Mi next door is better has been ongoing just as long. The neighborhood bears the scars of darker history too: plaques on school walls mark where Jewish children were rounded up during the Vel' d'Hiv roundup of 1942.

Since the 1990s, the Marais has also been the heart of LGBTQ+ Paris, centered around Rue des Archives and Rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie. It's one of those rare neighborhoods that manages to be simultaneously historic, trendy, diverse, and actually livable.