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Category / My Secret Paris

A Boat Trip through the Paris Sewer

Forget boat rides down the Seine, if you were a tourist in Paris in the 19th and early 20th century, the subterranean sewers were the hot ticket. In an 1869 travel guide to the city of light “for the English and American Traveller”, Paris’ new system of sewers came highly recommended in the sightseeing section. “Passing over the…

How Can Paris Let this Museum of Music Treasure Close Down?

I wasn’t exactly expecting the world when I was emailed by a local record collector urging me to visit an endangered private music museum in Paris at the foot of Montmartre. The Phono Museum? Never heard of it. Within my network of vinyl fanatic friends and small museum hunters, surely we would have come across such…

5 Hidden Paris Enclaves

If you stay in Paris long enough, you’ll no doubt end up with your own list of urban secrets. This city is full of them. All Parisians lay claim to favourite hidden spots which they unexpectedly stumbled across one day, feeling as if they had discovered a forgotten corner of the capital. It’s part of being a Parisian. My list grows everyday and…

Unlocking the Mystery of Villa Frochot

Villa Frochot is one of the most mysterious buildings in Paris. Closed to the public (or so we thought), rumours and hearsay about the villa vary depending on who you ask. Reliable sources speak of its days as an erotic cabaret in the 1920s, and according to the barman at the end of the street,…

The Parisian Mushroom Catacombs

In a fresh episode of our Don’t Be a Tourist: Mini Bites series, I venture underground on a quest to find one a gastronomic legend in the Parisian catacombs … Catch up with the rest of the series here Hungry for more Paris? The updated edition of Don’t Be a Tourist in Paris is now available. Or become…

The Louvre’s Secret Apartments

The Louvre; or, as we’ve prefer to call it, Paris’ most exhaustingly gorgeous tourist trap. In the MessyNessy guide, Don’t Be a Tourist in Paris, there’s even a chapter called, “Anything but the Louvre” that steers folks away from its selfie-stick jungles, and into the arms of more overlooked museums in the city. But this weekend, we decided to pay…

Haunting Postcards of Parisian Homicide

Note: Some of the images below contain disturbing content. Alphonse Bertillon was bad at a lot of things, but excellent at two: solving crime, and pissing people off. Both were honed during his long career at the Prefecture de Police in mid-19th century Paris, one of the grisliest eras for tracking down criminals in the rapidly growing metropolis.…

Welcome to One of the Last Cinema Prop Houses in Paris

Alright, you can forget about all those other times, this time, I really did find Paris’ best-kept secret. It’s taken me almost a year to gain access to the 4,000 square meter prop house hidden in central Paris, one of the last three to still survive within the city. After several attempts at emailing them, I luckily discovered that I have…

Armenian Soul Food at a Secret Paris Restaurant

Behind an unmarked door in the 9th arrondissement, at the back of peaceful courtyard, I found another Paris secret. The kind of place that you would only hear about via word of mouth, I heard about it from a guy in a bar one night who was teasing a few of his favourite local secrets after one too many…

Time Travel to a 1930s Dance School in Paris

“Forget your troubles and dance” were the wonderful lyrics once sang by Bob Marley and he wasn’t far wrong as we stepped into an old dance school that sits quietly at the bottom of a paved courtyard in Saint Germain. (7th arr) Not to be fooled though as the seemingly quiet exterior says nothing about…

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