The covered passages of Paris (french: Passages couverts de Paris) are an early form of
shopping arcade
A shopping center (American English) or shopping centre (Commonwealth English), also called a shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof.
The first known collec ...
built in
Paris, France
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
primarily during the first half of the 19th century. By the 1867 there were approximately 183
covered passages in Paris but this decreased greatly as a result of
Haussmann's renovation of Paris
Haussmann's renovation of Paris was a vast public works programme commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III and directed by his prefect of Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, between 1853 and 1870. It included the demolition of medieval neighbo ...
. Only a couple of dozen passages remain in the 21st century, all on the
Right Bank
In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as ''banks'' in different fields of geography, as follows.
In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terrai ...
.
The common characteristics of the covered passages are that they are:
pedestrian
A pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, whether walking or running. In modern times, the term usually refers to someone walking on a road or pavement, but this was not the case historically.
The meaning of pedestrian is displayed with ...
ised; glass-ceilings; artificially illuminated at night (initially with
gas lamps); privately owned; highly ornamented and decorated; lined with small shops on the ground floor; connecting two streets. Originally, to keep the ''passages'' clean, each would have an ''artiste de décrottage'' (a shit-removal artist) at the entrance to clean the shoes of visitors.
The ''passages ''were the subject of Walter Benjamin's incomplete magnum-opus ''
Passagenwerk'' (''Arcades Project'') which was posthumously published.
List of currently accessible passages
The following table lists the covered passages that still exist and remain accessible to the public.
Further reading
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References
External links
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{{Visitor attractions in Paris