French Revolution Tour in Paris: Private Historical Walking Tours

This French Revolution Tour is also a very nice tour of the famous Marais district.

Duration – Distance

• Duration : +/- 2.5-hour
• Distance covered:  +/- 2.5 Km (1.56 mi)

Itinerary

• Start: Place de la Bastille.
• Place des Vosges
• Rue Saint-Antoine
• Saint-Paul Saint-Louis Church
• Hôtel de Ville de Paris

Storming of the Bastille.

Themes of the Tour

The tour begins in Place de la Bastille, where the medieval armory fortress of La Bastille was stormed on July 14, 1789, and subsequently demolished within five months.

Most historians consider this event to be the beginning of the French Revolution.

The church of Sainte-Marie de la Visitation (converted into a Protestant temple by Napoleon Bonaparte after the 1801 Consulate), the rue des Tournelles, and the rue Saint-Antoine will help us recognize exactly where the Bastille was located.

When it was built between 1370 and 1382 as part of the medieval wall of Paris’s defense system, the Bastille was initially called the Château Saint-Antoine. Les Parisians would then call it the Bastide Saint-Antoine, then La Bastille.

The tour continues in parts of Paris nearly unchanged since the the French Révolution with rue Saint-Antoine and the Place des Vosges. 

Place des Vosges, the oldest of the five royal squares of Paris, was renamed in 1800 (when Napoleon Bonaparte was First Consul) in honor of the département of the Vosges, which was the first to pay its taxes; and was also the first to send national volunteers to the army (Volontaires nationaux) when the country (fatherland) was declared in danger (la patrie en danger) on 11 July 1792.

In Place des Vosges is also the house of Victor Hugo (now the Museum Maison Victor Hugo). His last novel, Ninety-Three (Quatrevingt-Treize), is dedicated to the 1793 Terror, the bloodiest period of the French Revolution.

Le cabaret de la rue du Paon Illustration of one of the original editions of Victor Hugo’s Novel « Quatre vingt Treize», 1793 with Marat, Danton, and Robespierre. Photo Musée Carnavalet / Maison de Victor Hugo.

There were conserved the hearths of the Sun King and his father Louis III, which were sold to a painter, Alexandre Pau de Saint-Martin, during the French Revolution to be used for his painting preparation. His painting “Vue de Caen” (in Pontoise Museum) most probably contains micro fragments of the heart of the Sun King.

The tour continues with a charming square built just a few years before the French Revolution and the Saint-Paul Fire Station, where, every year, one of the famous Bal des Pompiers du 14 Juillet (firefighters’ ball or Bastille Day ball: the night from July 13 to 14) is organized.

A plaque in rue du Roi de Sicile indicates where exactly the Princess de Lamballe was murdered.

Some of the very few timber houses of Paris and some of the most famous Renaissance and Baroque hôtel particuliers (private mansions) of the Marais are also planned to be on the itinerary.

• The Hôtel de Ville stands in Place de l’Hôtel de Ville (called Place de Grève before 1802), which was the traditional place for public execution since the Middle Ages.
• France’s last execution by dismemberment of Robert-François Damiens for attempted regicide was performed there in 1757, only 32 Years before the French Revolution. Poisoner François-Antoine Desrues was torn asunder alive and then burned alive there in 1777, only 12 years before the French Revolution.
• So, following the tradition during the Revolution, a lot of executions were organized there by the then-modern and much more human guillotine.

• This is from the Hôtel de Ville de Paris, where many parts of the July 13 and 14, 1789 riots, including the assault on the Invalides and the Bastille, were organized.
• On the 17th of July, only three days after the storming of the Bastille, Louis XVI came to the Hôtel de Ville to try to calm down the situation.
• Following the takeover of the Hôtel de Ville on the night of August 9 to 10, 1792, Danton and Hebert established a new insurrectional Commune and the assault on the Tuilleries Palace on August 10, then provoked the fall of the French Monarchy.
• This is in the Hôtel de Ville, where Robespierre was arrested on 9 Thermidor year II (27 July 1794). The day after, he was beheaded without trial on Place de la Concorde.

It is at the Hôtel de Ville that Robespierre was arrested on July 27, 1794 (9th to 10 Thermidor an II ). He was well acquainted with the district as he lived in the north Marais at 30 Rue de Saintonge from October 1789 to July 1791. This painting by Jean Joseph François Tassaert represents Robespierre’s arrest. It is not clear if Robespierre intended to commit suicide or was shot by a gendarme called Charles-André Merda, as in the illustration.

This Revolution Tour is adequate for history buffs but is also a must for first-timers as it covers a big part of the most famous part of central historical Paris.

This tour is more specifically designed for American citizens.

Duration – Distance

• Duration : +/- 3-hour
• Distance covered:  +/- 4.5 Km (2.8 mi)

Itinerary

• Start: Couvent des Cordeliers
• Métro Odéon
• Cour du Commerce-Saint-André
• Procope Café
• Saint-Germain des Près Church and district
• River Seine Crossing Scenery
• Louvre
• Palais Royal
• Saint-Roch Church
• Tuileries Garden
• Place Vendôme and hôtel de Bourvallais
• Rue Saint Honoré
• Royal Warehouse (Hôtel de la Marine)
• Place de la Concorde (formerly Place de la Révolution)

Saint-Roch Church, 13 Vendémiaire, Year 4 (5 October 1795). This battle in the streets of Paris established the Directory. It was a major factor in the ascent of Republican General Napoleon Bonaparte’s career. 

Themes of the Tour

The origine of the French Révolution. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and US independence. The Marquis de Lafayette, also known as “The Hero of the Two Worlds” (Le Héros des Deux Mondes).

At Saint-Germain-des-Prés, we will discover Procope Café at 13 rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, which was a meeting point for many French Revolution or US independence figures. 

Just behind is the Cour du Commerce-Saint-André, a famous landmark of the French Revolution with at n° 9 the workshop of Tobias Schmidt, piano maker. It is here that the infamous Guillotine was manufactured, and experiments were made on sheep in April 1792. The first human executed with the Guillotine was Nicolas Jacques Pelletier, a French highwayman, on the 25th of April 1792.

Just opposite, at n° 8, was the printing office of L’Ami du Peuple, the most influential political newspaper of the French Revolution, created and published by Jean-Paul Marat.

The tour also focuses on the end of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, how they lost their power in August 1792 at the east end of the Tuileries Garden at the Tuileries Palace, and then their heads in 1793  at the west end of the same garden in Place de la Concorde.

Indeed, after his Tuileries Palace was stormed on August 10, 1792, the legislative assembly suspended King Louis XVI from all his functions and powers the same day. The end of the Monarchy was voted on September 21, 1792, and the first Republic and the Convention started the next day (September 22).

We will also evoke the Importance of the Club des Cordeliers in the planning and execution of the 10 August 1792 insurrection, and moreover, the importance of Danton, the most powerful figure of the club at that time.

Danton then takes the head of the Ministry of Justice in 1792 at Hôtel Bourvallais (the former Royal Chancellerie since 1718), which is situated in Place Vendôme, another prominent landmark of the tour.

“Il nous faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, Toujours de l’audace !” (We must dare, and dare again, and go on daring!).

A lot of historians consider this declaration by Danton as the trigger of the 1792 September Massacres, a series of killings and summary executions of prisoners in Paris. Specialists generally believe that between 1000 and 1700 prisoners were killed from September 2 to September 6.

The Prison de L’abbaye (named that way for its proximity to the Abbaye of Saint Germain-des-Prés) is still remembered for the brutality and cruelty of its execution: More than 300 people were killed, among them 168 by direct order of the infamous Stanislas-Marie Maillard. 

The Saint Germain-des-Prés church, which was strongly damaged during the French Revolution, is on the tour itinerary. One of its altar pay tribute to all its clergy men butchered in September 1792.

Also on our itinerary, the Pavillon de Flore, one of the only two remains of the Palais des Tuileries, where the apartments of the Princess de Lamballe were before August 10, 1792. Princess de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette’s close friend, is the most famous victim of the September Massacres; she was butchered in the Marais (see Marais French Revolution Tour).

Simultaneously to these massacres, the Royal Warehouse (now Hotel de la Marine in place de la Concorde) was pillaged and looted in September 1792. It is another important landmark of the tour.

This tour also evokes another famous member of the Club des Cordeliers, Jean Paul Mara , who asked for nothing less than 270,000 heads during the massacres of September 1792.

We will go to rue de l’Ecole de Médecine, formerly rue des Cordeliers, where the Club des Cordeliers was, and where at the number 30 of the street, Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday on the 13th of July 1793.

The death of Marat is a milestone in the intensification of the French Revolution, and was used to justify the Terror Period.

A few months later, on October 16th, 1793, Marie Antoinette was guillotined, and 31 October 1793, all the leaders of the Girondins, the moderate section of the National Convention, were beheaded.

It is in the same Pavillon de Flore, which the year before was still housing the apartments of Princess de Lamballe, that the infamous Committee of Public Safety was staying.  It was the de facto executive branch of the French Republic during the Reign of Terror. This group of twelve, run by the Jacobins under Robespierre, centralized denunciations, trials, and executions.

In this most bloody period of the French Revolution, even Danton was executed on 5 April 1794 as too moderate.

There is a statue of Danton at the métro Odéon at the end of Cour du Commerce-Saint-André, where his apartment was.

Just before his execution, Danton said to his executioner: “Show my head to the people; it is worth seeing.”

Less than four months after Danton’s death, Robespierre himself was arrested on 9 Thermidor year II (27 July 1794), the same night the Club des Jacobins was closed. The day after, Robespierre and his Friends were taken to the Guillotine.

This is the Thermidorienne reaction that marked the end of the Terror period.

The place where the Club des Jacobins was is on our itinerary. Still, nothing remains of it as its building (a former church) was destroyed in 1795 to create a public market called “9 Thermidor Market,” nowadays Marché Saint Honoré. 

Close to it, we won’t see the building of the Convention (assembly), which Napoleon destroyed to open the rue de Rivoli; only a commemorative plaque remains.

But Robespierre’s house on rue Saint Honoré, which saw so many condemned persons passing on their way to the guillotine on Place de la Concorde (including Marie Antoinette and Robespierre himself), is still there.

The Vendémiaire Coup and Napoleon Bonaparte‘s ascension to power,  his marriage with Joséphine de Beauharnais, etc., are also usually part of the tour

Warning: Part of this Tour is Redundant With all our Napoleon Tours

This tour is the same one as the 3-hour Left to Right Bank Revolution Tour but with one extra hour, which includes the Luxembourg Garden and Sorbonne areas.

This French Revolution tour is more specifically designed for American citizens.

Duration – Distance 

• Duration : +/- 4-hour
• Distance covered:  +/- 6.3 Km (3.9 mi)

Itinerary

• Start: Close to Luxembourg Garden (Jardin du Luxembourg)
• Palais du Luxembourg (French high Chamber)
• Petit Luxembourg
• Théatre de l’Odeon
• Sorbonne

Then continues with the itinerary of the 3 hours left to right bank tour.

This tour is the South Bank part of the 4-hour South Bank to North Bank French Revolution Tour. It is also a very nice Saint-Germain-des-Près Tour starting close to the impressive Jardin du Luxembourg  (Luxembourg Garden).   

This French Revolution tour is also recommended for  American (us) citizens.

Duration – Distance

• Duration : +/- 2-hour
• Distance covered:  +/- 3.5 Km (2.8 mi)

Itinerary

• Start: Jardin du Luxembourg
• Palais du Luxembourg (French high Chamber)
• Petit Luxembourg
• Théatre de l’Odeon
• Cour du Commerce Saint-André
• Procope Café
• Saint-Germain-des-Près Church and district

Themes of the Tour

All the ones of the south bank part of the 4-hour South bank to North bank French Revolution Tour:

Mara Assassination, Charlotte Corday, Danton, Robespierre, Club des Cordeliers, Guillotine invention, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, US independence, September Massacres, Napoleon Bonapart Coup, Queen Marie Antoinette, Olympe de Gouges, Luxembourg Prison, Directoire Coup, Metric System, etc.