Metravel city quest
City Paris: free walking route “quest: starting at kilometre zero” along the sights. 12 points. Approximately 3 h. Quests and legends - straight from your
When a road sign somewhere near Lyon says ‘Paris 465’, those kilometres are not measured to a station or the Eiffel Tower. They are measured to one single bronze slab in the paving in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral. This is point zero, kilometre zero for all the country's roads, officially assigned to the cathedral forecourt by a royal decision back in the 18th century.
Officials did not choose the place at random. The Île de la Cité is the original Paris: here, in the middle of the Seine, more than two thousand years ago, lived the Gallic Parisii tribe that gave the city its name. The city grew outwards from here in rings, like a tree, and today we will read it that way: west from the zero mark, along the Seine and the great Parisian axis, towards places where each next stop is a couple of centuries younger than the last. A medieval cathedral, a royal palace, the first ‘modern’ bridge, a palace turned museum, and a square holding the city's oldest and, at the same time, ‘newest’ monument.
Along the way come kings and revolutions, the legend of a vengeful bronze founder, the loudest art scandal of the 1980s, and one very persistent number that never proved true. All within a single walk from zero.
What to do: 1) Read the story and task at each stop. 2) Find the place on the map and walk to it. 3) Look around and answer the question.
This walking route is about four kilometres long, almost entirely along embankments, squares and gardens. We start on Notre-Dame's forecourt, some fifty metres in front of the main façade. Onwards — to zero!
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
You are on Notre-Dame's forecourt, and somewhere beneath your feet is the beginning of every road in France. Look in the paving, about fifty metres in front of the cathedral, for a circular bronze-and-stone marker: an octagonal bronze medallion, surrounded by a stone ring divided into four sections bearing the words ‘POINT — ZÉRO — DES ROUTES — DE FRANCE’.
Twenty steps from the zero slab bring you to the cathedral. Before you stands Notre-Dame's west façade.
An optional stop for anyone who wants to see what a wall made of light looks like. From Notre-Dame, walk west along rue de Lutèce to boulevard du Palais.
Opening hours: April–September: daily 09:00–19:00; October–March: daily 09:00–17:00. Closed on 1 January, 1 May and 25 December. · Ticket: 16 € for EEA residents, 22 € for others; combined Sainte-Chapelle + Conciergerie ticket: 23 €/30 €. Free for EU residents under 26.
Walk to the corner of boulevard du Palais and the island's northern embankment. Above you rises the square tower of the Conciergerie, the former royal palace of the Capetians, bearing the oldest public clock in Paris.
Follow the Clock Embankment west to the island's tip. Here the Seine is crossed by Pont Neuf, the ‘New Bridge’ that is actually the oldest surviving bridge in Paris: its first stone was laid in 1578, and it was completed by 1607.
Cross Pont Neuf to the right bank and turn left, downstream along the embankment beside the Louvre. The famous boxes of Paris's second-hand booksellers begin on the river parapet, stretching, with gaps, for kilometres along both banks of the Seine.
Turn right from the embankment, beneath the Louvre's archway, and you are in the grand Cour Napoléon, where a glass pyramid rises from the paving. Today Paris is unimaginable without it, but in the 1980s the project was almost buried.
An optional stop for anyone ready to trade an hour's walk for a meeting with the Mona Lisa. The Louvre is the world's largest art museum: eight centuries of the building's own history, from Philip II Augustus's fortress to a palace turned museum, and hundreds of thousands of exhibits, from the Venus de Milo to ‘Liberty Leading the People’.
Opening hours: Mon, Thu, Sat, Sun: 09:00–18:00; Wed and Fri: 09:00–21:45; closed on Tuesday. Closed on 1 January, 1 May and 25 December. · Ticket: 22 € for EEA residents, 32 € for others. Free for visitors under 18 (and EEA residents under 26). Timed ticket; in summer (1 July – 31 August), booking is required.
Cross rue de Rivoli and duck into the block behind the Comédie-Française: you are in the Palais-Royal. Cardinal Richelieu built the palace in the 1630s and left it to the Crown, hence its ‘royal’ name.
Return to rue de Rivoli and walk west along the arcades until gold flashes to your left. On little place des Pyramides, a gilded Joan of Arc shines on horseback, rising in her stirrups.
Directly opposite golden Joan is the fence of the Tuileries Garden. Go inside and walk to the large round pond in the garden's eastern part.
Walk west through the garden and emerge onto place de la Concorde, the largest square in Paris. Its history swings between extremes: created in the 18th century as place Louis XV, it became place de la Révolution during the Revolution.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.