Free Walk Three: Street Art

My third free walking tour download is based around a tricky subject and one that leaves nobody indifferent. Street art by definition is often temporary, so how could I make geographical links between these ephemeral creations? I decided to focus on just one part of the city; the streets around Menilmontant and Belleville. This part of the city is so rich in creations that even within such a small area I could easily have drawn several other routes, but I selected what I believe to be the most varied sector.

I also tried to include the widest range of creations possible, including stencils, sculptures, wall paintings and graffiti. Some items were commissioned and are permanent, whilst others can be considered illegal and are by definition extremely temporary. Others are by artists that have become so well-known that the city authorities would now not dare to remove them.

Paris is home to some of the most important and influential artists working in the genre, but not all have worked in this part of the city. Because of this I have created a Who’s Who of Paris Street Art section at the end of this document with tips on where to see the artists who are not featured as well as links to their websites.

Download the walk here.. Once again, please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any problems downloading the walk, or if you have any comments or suggestions.

Free Paris Walking Tours!

The first freely downloadable Invisible Paris walk is now available – as well as a completely new dedicated website (http://invisiblepariswalks.blogspot.fr/)!

The first walk, a 20 page PDF document, is entitled From Sainte Rita to Saint Lazare : A trip into the female experience of the city, and runs from Pigalle to the old Hôpital St Lazare. This area is rich with images and anecdotes on the female condition, mixing art, religion and work. It investigates places linked to women, where women have tried to live freely or where women were forced to do things against their will. Naturally this often involves discussion of men too, and their role in the repression or liberation of women, as well as how they chose to represent them.

Why am I creating these walks though? Well, I enjoy running this blog and researching different parts of Paris, but it started to feel as if the information only had a very short life-span. Blogs are hungry creatures and need regular feeding, but the accumulation of information means that posts are quickly relegated to the hard-to-find archives. A solution to this problem therefore was to group together the posts as walking tours, and liberate them from the blog format.

This was the theory anyway. In reality, this has taken me a lot longer than I thought it would to put together, but I still think that the effort was worthwhile. It was quite easy to find a cluster of posts that were linked by theme and geographical location, but a walk also involves directions, maps and supplementary information between the principal spots, and this is the time-consuming part!

I also felt that readers of this blog may want another resource, especially if they are planning a trip to Paris. I have tried to make these walk documents something that will be interesting to read and look at even if you never visit Paris, but the main goal is that they be used to help show a slightly different side of the city to visitors and residents.

Forthcoming walks (currently being polished up!) will include Street Art and Contemporary Architecture. Others will follow if these are popular and when I have a little bit more time!

Anyway, I hope as many as you as possible choose to download the PDF walk documents, even if it is just for a little light reading. Please feel free also to share them with friends and family, as an additional goal of the document is to attract new visitors to this blog. Finally, if you do download one please don’t hesitate to give me any feedback, corrections or suggestions you may have. Happy reading and walking!