Destination: France : Paris Covered : In a hidden world of passages and galleries, filled with shops, the city’s history unfolds

We all love strolling through Paris when the sun is shining and the chestnut trees are in bloom--never knowing what delights will reveal themselves. But alas, sometimes it rains cats and dogs; sometimes it is perishing cold and damp; sometimes in a heat wave the streets become suffocating. Don’t despair. Paris’ 19th-Century builders, alert to the importance of comfort to pleasure-seekers and consumers, created a solution that allows all the urban joys of strolling while shielded from weather and traffic: a hidden, interior city of skylight-covered passages, arcades and galleries.

A chain of passages stretches from the First and Second arrondissements near the Louvre, up north to the Grand Boulevards in the Ninth. You can spend the day, window-shop (“window-licking” it’s called in French) for clothes of all descriptions; lunch; go to the hairdresser; select a walking stick, or toy soldiers, antique dolls or masks, engraved calling-cards, expensive bed-linen, cosmetics, flowers; dawdle over bookstalls or in art galleries; sit in a sidewalk cafe and sip tea or an aperitif; go to a theater or a museum, a sauna, a hotel; dine elegantly, hardly ever emerging into the open weather. Some of the oldest and most interesting shops in Paris are in these galleries. In your progress, you can see Paris unfold its social history, pass from chic opulence to popular pleasures, from luxury to quaint, dusty charm.

Start at the northeast corner of the Louvre. Just north of the Rue de Rivoli, the Rue Saint-Honore intersects Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which goes north past the tiny Rue du Pelican, and arrives at the entrance of the Galerie Vero-Dodat.

Step inside, and you are in another world, almost untouched, 200 years old. One of the elements contributing to the magic of the passages is the quiet: no traffic noises or odors. This gallery was built in the early 19th Century by two enterprising pork butchers, Messieurs Vero and Dodat, who kept shops here. All its original wooden shop fronts are intact, with their multiple brass-arched window frames, and little engaged colonnettes. Although gas lamps have been replaced by electric bulbs, the light through the long, pitched skylights is gentle, reflecting off the diamond-pattern white and black mosaic tile floor. The wood ceiling between the skylights is coffered and gilded and painted with rustic scenes, garlands and cherubs.

The mezzanine level looking into the passage, also heavily decorated and painted, has apartments. The great tragic actress Rachel lived here in the 1840s, a stone’s throw from the Comedie Francaise, where she was a star. At No. 2 is a printer’s shop that looks as if it has been there the whole time; it is followed by a gemologist’s, a leather-goods shop, a lutemaker’s (mandolins and violins also) at No. 17, and at Nos. 23 and 24 a shop specializing in antique dolls and old gramophones, reputed to be a favorite of actress Catherine Deneuve. At No. 19 is the modestly priced but chic Restaurant Vero-Dodat, with a mezzanine dining room looking into the passage. A designer furniture gallery, clothing stores and an attractive cafe- brasserie , with lace curtains and outdoor tables complete the gallery at its west end.

Follow your nose west, under an arch to the tiny Place de Valois, and on through to a quiet side entrance to the Palais Royal. Through the forecourt, turning right brings you to the eastern arcade of the Palais Royal. At first it looks unpromising, but keep walking under the arcades, and soon you will be in a wonderland of shops, some dating back to the 18th Century.

Most visitors today come here for the beautiful garden but neglect the arcades with their graceful lanterns hanging in each arch. Louis XIV left the original Royal Palace of 1639 to his brother, whose artistic, high-living and dissolute heirs turned the Palais Royal into an arty and hot neighborhood. The garden and arcades were built during the period 1781-86 for speculation by debt-ridden Philippe, Duc d’Orleans, who rented or sold the 180 shops with elegant apartments above. Emulating Venice’s Piazza San Marco, the arcades had stylish coffeehouses, restaurants and aristocratic gaming clubs. Common soldiers, women in aprons and delivery boys weren’t allowed in. Thomas Jefferson and Washington Irving were among early American strollers here.

Because Philippe denied the police entry to the Palais Royal these coffeehouses became revolutionary hotbeds; it was here on July 13, 1789, that the march on the Bastille was incited. Philippe, called Phillipe “Egalite” for his democratic beliefs, was always broke, and after the revolution his tenants became sleazier. (He went to the scaffold in 1793 during the Reign of Terror.) By 1804, there were 11 loan sharks, 18 gambling houses and 17 billiard halls. Palais Royal was infamous for brothels; there was even a circus, a wax museum (at No. 17, founded by Madame Tussaud’s uncle) and a dance hall. American Ebenezer Smith Thomas, former editor of the Charleston Gazette, wrote in 1820 that there were about 500 shops in the Palais Royal, that you could have a suit of clothes made while you sipped coffee, and be gratuitously entertained by dancers on ropes and wires; that at the famous Mille Colonnes coffeehouse as many as 200 people gathered of an evening and discussed art, science, literature, politics. When gambling was abolished in Paris on Dec. 31, 1837, Palais Royal died. It has now been reborn, elegant if slightly musty.

The apartments above the arcades remain some of the most desirable in Paris. Stars of the Comedie Francaise at the Theatre Francaise here (also built by Philippe) get them as perks. Colette lived and died here (after drinking a last glass of champagne). Author/director/poet Jean Cocteau lived here, as did film actor Jean Marais.

Traveling north along the eastern arcade brings you to the extraordinary display of engraved invitations by international royalty in the windows of No. 153, Guillaumot, engraver and heraldry expert, where you can have cards and stationery engraved with your coat of arms. They have been in business since 1761. Farther on are antiques and art galleries; perfumes at No. 141; rare books at 139; several shops of exquisite household linens, such as at 132; needlepoint and tapestry supplies at 128. At 112, the top of the east arcade, is Espace Champagne, a restaurant specializing in champagne and things such as foie gras and smoked salmon to absorb it. During nice weather, they have umbrella-shaded tables in the garden.

The short north arcade has three arches exiting out to Rue de Beaujolais. Between them are Anna Joliet’s shop with music boxes, and next door, magnificent marionnettes, puppets and dolls. The last arch to the west runs between the Theater de Palais-Royal (also built by Philippe; it still has its 18th-Century interior), where they show popular plays, variety and musicals, and the Grand Vefour restaurant. In business since 1760 as the Cafe De Chartres, it opened its doors here in 1784. At the turn of the century, Napoleon courted Josephine in its exquisitely painted Louis XVI interior. It has a serious claim to being the most beautiful restaurant in Paris. Later on, Victor Hugo was one of its habitues when it became a writer’s hangout during the 1850s, the Second Empire.

Turning down the western arcade, there are several pleasant restaurants, also with outdoor tables, where afternoon coffee, tea and pastry are served, too. There is a toy shop, a perfumer, an architect’s office, and at No. 42, a store specializing in men’s brilliantly decorative waistcoats. At Nos. 37-38, historical military figurines of famous generals--Napoleon, Joachim Murat, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand--toy soldiers and artillery in formation are deployed in the windows of Les Drapeaux de France. A jeweler’s, a store with papier-mache masks, fine clothing and cosmetics, and at Nos. 6-7, and 3-4, two shops specializing in military medals and orders conclude the parade.

Backtrack to the north side or cut across the garden under the lime trees and cross tiny Rue de Beaujolais. Outside the northeast corner of the Palais Royal a short flight of steps leads you up through the short Passage des Deux Pavillions. Cross the Rue des Petits Champs, glancing east for a moment toward the Place des Victoires to admire the equestrian statue of Louis XIV.

You will now be at the entrance of the Galerie Colbert, built in 1830. Now owned by Bibliotheque Nationale (next door), they have an annex here with public exhibits, including a museum of the theater and of recorded voices. Opulently restored, the Colbert’s classical arches and columns of false marble, two-story mezzanine, gilded light fixtures with milk-glass globes, domed skylit rotunda with statuary, painted Empire motifs and mosaic floors, are spacious and grand.

The Galerie Colbert runs back into the L-shaped Galerie Vivienne, built in 1823. Its high skylights are set between stone arches at the upper mezzanine level, and its arched colonnade is echoed in the circular patterns of the mosaic floor. A shop for rare books has been here since 1826. There are also trendy children’s clothing, toys, housewares and gifts, and designer clothing shops such as avant-garde Jean-Paul Gaultier, Yuki Torii and Catherine Vernoux. An elegant tea room, with tables in the gallery, tempts you to linger. Lucien Legrand, Filles et Fils (daughters and sons) at the Rue de la Banque end, is a famous wine shop. *

You can now make a loop to a very different world, the Passage Choiseul, reached by going west along the Rue des Petits Champs. The Choiseul is the epitome of the petit-bourgeois world of 19th-Century Paris, very different from the grandeurs of the Palais Royal or the Vivienne. Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s parents had a lace shop here, with a three-room triplex above, two levels under the long skylight, one above. He describes its enclosed, incestuously suffocating microcosm in his great turn-of-the-century novel “Death on Credit.”

It is still a very popular place. It is narrower and less decorated than the other passages, but its lack of class is compensated by liveliness. You will find cheap clothing stores, toys, baggage, a cobbler, stand-up Vietnamese-food counters, ties, artists’ supplies, jewelry, sexy underwear.

Coming out the north end of the Choiseul, turn right on the Rue Saint-Augustin, which arrives in a few blocks at the intersection with Rue Vivienne, by the imposing colonnaded Bourse, the Paris stock exchange. Continue north along Rue Vivienne; turn right at the next corner on Rue des Panoramas, left immediately on tiny Rue Feydeau through to Rue Saint-Marc with its three entrances to the Passage des Panoramas, and its branches: Galeries Feydeau, Saint Marc, Varietes and Montmartre. At the middle entrance is a sauna- hammam , a Turkish bath (this one is for men only). There are several so-so restaurants and the general atmosphere is seedy, but when you continue north to the main Passage des Panoramas you are in a bustling, skylit, flower- and light-filled space, ultimately leading out to its main entrance on Boulevard Montmartre. There are pots of red begonias everywhere, and the shops range from several stamp collectors, chic used clothing ( fripes ), coiffeurs, engravers and florists. Of particular note is a popular restaurant-cafe with tables in the passage, called the Arbre a Cannelle (cinnamon tree), with an ancient painted and gilded shop front and painted ceiling inside.

Passage des Panoramas has a particularly American association. In 1800 the American inventor Robert Fulton, who had a French patent on the “panorama,” or circular painting, had two large silo-structures, 46 feet in diameter, built in a garden on the Boulevard Montmartre to show what were eventually 18 wildly popular, historic panorama paintings of cities. The alley between them, the Passage des Panoramas, was soon built up. The proceeds from the panoramas bankrolled Fulton’s submarine and steamboat projects, both first tested in the Seine.

A pension e-hotel, built as part of the gallery above the entrance, at the corner of the Rue Vivienne, became very popular with visiting Americans, and people such as Ralph Waldo Emerson stayed there in 1832. If you cross the boulevard directly, you enter the Passage Jouffroy (1846). This passage has two parts as it zigzags north. The southern is the more lively, with the Restaurant Ronceray by the boulevard, its entrance to the Musee Grevin waxworks museum, and the charming Hotel Chopin at No. 46, classified as an historic monument. At No. 34 an enormous moose head trophy hangs above the windows of Maison Gilbert, founded in 1848 and selling walking sticks and umbrellas. The northern half of the Passage Jouffroy is entirely given over to bookshops, posters, art and ceramics. It is very, very peaceful.

When you leave the Jouffroy, just cross the street (Rue de la Grange Bateliere, meaning boat-barn) and you’re at the entrance to the Passage Verdeau, the farthest north in the chain. There is a Salon de The and modest Restaurant Verdeau, with tables in the passage, shops with old books, flowers, clothes, needlework and a photography shop that has been there all along, with a display of antique cameras. The passage veers right, letting you out on the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, one of the most popular honky-tonk streets of Paris, and also the most ancient.

We have traveled from the pre-revolutionary world of dissolute courtiers, through the 19th-Century worlds of nouveau-riche luxury and petit-bourgeois populism and have emerged onto a workaday modern Paris street, overlying a Druid path.