STROLL
From village de Passy to palais de Chaillot
The walk begins in the heart of the old village of Passy, at the Maison de Balzac, the home where the author took refuge to write The Human Comedy. This vibrant space now houses a lively museum and a bucolic garden with a view of the Eiffel Tower. Further down, the picturesque Rue Berton, where Balzac fled to escape his creditors, is also worth seeing!
This leads you to Avenue Marcel Proust, a thoroughfare that clearly illustrates Passy's location, at the top of a hill, with the Parc de Passy below, and the hundreds of steps you have to climb to reach Rue Raynouard.
As in Montmartre, you climb up and down its cobbled streets, leading here to the Wine Museum (located on Rue des Eaux!), there to Square Alboni, a residential street lined with Art Deco buildings that has also housed the Nubar Library since 1928, the custodian of thousands of of works from the literary heritage of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire.
The Passy metro station is worth a stop: built in 1903 on a sloping site, it has the distinction of being underground at its western end and above ground at the other, offering an extraordinary view of Paris, both inside and outside the trains.
Then take Rue de Passy, famous for its shops, making a short detour via Rue Eugène Manuel to admire the Les Chardons building and its Art Nouveau decor by Charles Klein, covered with ceramics by Emile Muller.
At the pretty Place Jean Bologne and Rue de l'Annonciation, you are in the heart of the old wine-growing village of Passy. This neighborhood, which has retained its old-world charm, can be explored as you stroll. Along the way, stop at the Passy Market with its colorful stalls, its oyster bar, and its counter. Breton.
A short walk away, take Rue Vital, Avenue Paul Doumer, then Rue Scheffer and Rue Vineuse, two streets that also embody the soul of Passy with their Art Nouveau and Art Deco buildings, their winemaking past, and their literary life. You arrive at Avenue de Camoëns, at the bottom or top of the stairs, where you'll find the pink marble monument dedicated to the Portuguese poet Luis Vaz de Camöens.
Continuing along Avenue des Etats-Unis, you'll discover another impressive monument dedicated to Admiral de Grasse, at the entrance to the Trocadéro Gardens. Nestled on 9 hectares between the Eiffel Tower and the Trocadéro Esplanade, these gardens are home to numerous sculptures from the 1930s. The more curious will look for the oldest plane tree in Paris (26 m tall) and the skylight of the 16th-century Hôtel de Ville, a remnant of the former facade of the Tuileries Palace, before reaching the Palais de Chaillot and its cultural institutions: the Cité de l’architecture and the Théâtre national de danse in the northeast wing (known as the Paris wing), the Musée national de la Marine and the Musée de l’Homme in the southwest wing (known as the Passy wing).
