Paris in the winter. Cold, gray, but the sun shines and shines. I love Paris at any time, but especially in the winter…. During this period there are very few tourists in the City of Lights and it lives its normal, flowing, busy life, of the local French, and not of the tourists.
In 1936, the socialist government in France, led by Leon Blum (yes, ours), enacted the “paid vacation” law – the first in the world (“Conges Payes”) that applied to all workers, wherever they were. Although such a law was first enacted in 1853 under the rule of Emperor Napoleon III, it applied only to employees of the government apparatus. This model was later adopted by many countries, although not yet to all workers in the economy.
The world of vacations and tourism has changed, new habits have taken over our world and today, most of the world goes on vacation in the summer, namely July-August, mainly due to school holidays. The situation is the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere, Australia, South America, etc. – where the annual vacation is in January-February – Christmas without snow, Santa Claus surfs the waves and wears shorts.
Naturally, most world tourists are familiar with the Paris In the summer, in July and August. A small number also know it in the spring (April-May-June), and an even smaller number know it in the city of Lights In the fall (September-October, maybe November too). How many of you know Paris in the winter? And I don't mean those who were invited there for a medical conference or some kind of trade show – those are hardly tourists in the city anyway, just running from lecture to meeting, from restaurant to cocktail.
I, who lived there for several years in a row – summer and winter, and everything in between – learned to love Paris precisely at this time of year, when everything is gray, the sky is “low”…. There is a French expression “Ciel de Plomb”, “lead sky” – when the clouds are low, gray, and even black, imposing a heavy and oppressive atmosphere on everyone, gray, saturated with gloomy clouds and the possibility of pouring rain.
It seems as if the city is at night, during the day. Surprisingly (unlike London, or Brussels) in Paris it doesn't rain much and snow is even rarer. When there is no "leaden sky" aboveThe victory gate OrEiffel TowerThe sky is clear and the city is freezing cold – between 1 and 6 degrees Celsius, and even less.
Daylight breaks through hesitantly at nine in the morning, and by four in the afternoon it is dark again on the streets. But during the day – if you are lucky – the sun shines, even though the cold is freezing and forces everyone to take out their heavy coats and colorful scarves. But the sun shines in all its glory, to the point of pulling out sunglasses from their bags.
These are my days of celebration. And to these days I have now traveled, in January 2025.
I'm not going to describe to you the historical sites, or tourist attractions in the city. You'll hear those from summer tourists. I'm going to tell you winter experiences, little stories of cold and sun, cold and burning iron, bright and gray days among bare trees and fallen leaves scattered on the sidewalks. I'll try to spice it up with a few facts and stories that maybe not everyone knows about the most beautiful city in the world.
I went for a walk in a cold city, shining in the sun. Above the pharmacy on the corner of the street, a green cross rose, sparkling and flashing – like almost all pharmacies throughout Paris – which every 5 seconds projected the date, time and temperature. I stopped and looked at it for a long time…. “January 14, 2025, 09:12, C°-5 ” (in translation. In reality, it said “Janvier”).
True, “-5” is relatively rare, and in the photos I took in the following days I “made do” with only “°1″, or sometimes “°3″. I pulled out my camera and immortalized several buildings on street corners – the sun was shining on the gray walls of Paris, and for a moment, as I opened my coat to reveal the camera, my hands shook and my fingers froze.
This is truly an exercise in common sense. Walking around the city wearing sunglasses, the light shining on the walls of the white buildings and logic refuses to accept that the thermometer shows only a single digit number. Paris in winter. And to all this, the trees so characteristic of the City of Lights (or The city is gray(according to Naomi Shemer) – an embroidery of trees and branches growing out of each other, thin and naked without a single leaf for healing, thin and delicate just like the works of the sculptor Giacometti….
It's time for coffee. croissant). I sat down in a corner cafe – heated of course. The owner was doing his job wearing a short T-shirt. I took off my coat and waited for the steaming coffee, with the fresh croissant. Through the window I watched the passersby, running around on the city sidewalks.
Most of them, curled up, wrapped up and squeezed inside themselves, were busy taking their offspring to kindergartens or schools at this time of morning. The children were wrapped in puffy nylon jackets (Uniqlo, or similar), in every possible color and pattern, and looked like walking balloons. You only notice a pair of eyes to see where they were going, their red noses to breathe…. And that was it.
Everything else is covered and wrapped almost hermetically. The parents are a little wilder – bare hands to hold the child in the crosswalk, faces exposed to peek left and right. Every now and then a mother would put her hand in her coat pocket, keeping a close eye on the child sitting on a small bike, or a father would raise his hand to his face and blow hot, steamy air onto his frozen fingers, accompanied by a cloud of steam blooming around him.
I wondered what this picture would look like when it rains, everything is wet and the water is seeping in and getting into every fold and crack that they didn't notice when they wrapped themselves up in the house, before they closed the door. But as I said, there isn't much rain in Paris. For this vacation, I checked the weather forecast for the next two weeks - only one day is expected to rain, and that too only for a short time in the morning. Now is the time to visit a museum, or maybe wander around thePassages, the malls of the 19th century.
Hotel de Ville, Paris
One day, I took an in-depth, extensive, and detailed trip to the area of Marsh – from Place de Vosges , via Saint-Antoine to Hotel de Ville , the magnificent structure that many consider the most beautiful building in Paris. Every time I come to Paris, I plan to enter this building for a guided tour of its treasures (there is no independent tour), but I always miss the available dates, and I learned that in the last two years these tours have stopped altogether.
In many documentaries about this building, the claim is repeatedly mentioned that the office of the mayor of Paris is larger and more magnificent than the office of the president. France, at the Elysee Palace… I approached the building guards at one of the entrances and told them with great pity and compassion that I knew there were no guards in the building and that I would be happy just to take a peek at the entrance courtyard, without entering the building itself….
My pleas, despite my fluent French, were of no avail, and they refused. Many do not know that Paris had not had a mayor for many years. Until French RevolutionIn 1789, the city manager was actually the head of the council of trade of the city's merchants' guild, and there was no position – or title – of "mayor" in Paris.
The last head of the Board of Trade was assassinated during the French Revolution, and the first mayor of Paris was appointed the very next day. After the riots of the Commune (Les Comunes de Paris, 1870), during which many government institutions at various levels were overthrown, the position of mayor of Paris was abolished, and it was run by a city council composed of the heads of its various districts.
According to the municipal law of 1795, the city was divided into 12 districts. Over the years, with the demolition of the wall around the city and the “annexation” of adjacent villages – Belleville, Montmartre, Passy and others – these became new districts and thus the Paris of today was created – which already has 20 districts.
Twenty mayors of the districts governed the city in a sort of council – like a 20-seat parliament. In 20, the need for a “supreme” mayor to control the city council was recognized, and Jacques Chirac (1977-1932) was elected as the first mayor in the modern era. It should be noted that in 2019, the first woman was elected mayor – Anne Hidalgo – who has held the position to this day, for more than ten consecutive years.
Where the city hall now stands, the Chamber of Commerce used to stand, as that was the city port of Paris – where the river ships would arrive with all their goods, where everything was unloaded and where the various taxes and payments were collected. During the riots of the Commune (see above), the building was burned to the ground, and after the riots subsided, a new, grander and larger city hall was built there.
In any case, as I already mentioned, there are no guided tours of the magnificent City Hall, which used to have to be booked months in advance. Today, Paris City Hall is presented in videos on the Internet (virtual tours):
If you would like to learn more about the Hotel de Ville, you are welcome to read the article. Hotel de Ville – because the city of Paris also needs a palace.
Truncated corners of houses and iron pillars at the gate (Porche)
During my many trips around the city – in winter and summer – I tend to follow the recommendations of many guides, both written and spoken, and look up at the walls of houses and buildings. I discover many beautiful things, and also less so, but over time I noticed that many Parisian buildings have a truncated corner, “cut” at 45 degrees at the intersection of streets.
After seeing a few houses like this, my curiosity was piqued and I set out to do some in-depth research. During Baron Haussmann’s time, that is, the mid-19th century, there weren’t many cars on the streets – in fact, there weren’t any yet – and the common means of transportation was horse-drawn carts. A horse, as we know, does whatever comes to its mind, even if its owner speaks to it kindly, harshly, or with a whip.
When a cart, or carriage, reached a street corner and turned right or left, it often happened that the horse ran into the wall of the building standing on the street corner (don't forget that such carriage horses were often blindfolded so that they would only look ahead and not be distracted to the sides). Sometimes the horse was injured, sometimes the carriage was damaged, and sometimes the building itself was damaged.
Baron Haussmann arose and established a rule that the corners of houses would be cut at a 45-degree angle – this way the horse could “take” the turn without significant damage….
Many typical houses from the period retained this truncated corner of the building. However, over the years, the matter was accepted as a decorative feature of the building, and even after the introduction of motorized cars into our culture, this custom of truncating the corners of the building remained. Even in modern buildings built in recent decades, deep into the 20th century, truncated buildings still exist, even when the sidewalk itself is a great distance from the wall of the building.
Moreover, at that time, due to the use of carts and horses, it was customary to erect iron pillars, or dressed stone, on both sides of the entrance gates to the inner courtyards (Porche), to prevent the cart, or horse, from hitting the gate posts, or the wooden gate itself, which is often carved. In many houses with inner courtyards that are currently used as parking areas (for cars!) for the buildings and the residents, such pillars are still erected out of aesthetic design “habit.”
Ask many Pharisees about the use and justification for these columns, or the truncated corners in buildings – in their opinion, this has been the custom over the years and they do not know the actual explanation for this construction.
The post office in Paris
One day I went for another walk in the city. Only after I left the house, went through the building gate and out onto the sidewalk – I regretted it. The cold outside hit me like a chilly slap in the face, to the point of heretical thoughts urging me to return to the warm room…. I glanced at the green cross of the pharmacy on the corner of the street.
One could have made do with a single-digit panel. The green cross, sparkling and flashing, proudly displayed the number “1.” It’s impossible to say that I was used to the cold, but I was already outside, and yet, I came to Paris to walk, not to sit and warm up in a room – that can be done at home (I checked. In Tel Aviv that day it was 11 degrees. Oddly enough, it also consisted of a “1″….).
I shoved my hands deep into my coat pockets, but I remained alert to raise my camera as soon as necessary. On the corner of the street I saw a postal worker, dressed in a uniform (a blue and yellow postal service uniform), fiddling with a yellow metal box, rattling his bunch of keys and opening the box, taking out a bundle of letters that he stuffed into a sack he held in his hand – outgoing mail.
His movements were a little stiff, a little shaky…. After all, it was almost 0 degrees outside. Have you ever tried to touch metal at such a temperature? No wonder the worker was wearing thick leather gloves, on which was the logo – in yellow of course – “La Poste”.
Yes, in Paris they still send letters to mailboxes. Less, but they still send them.
No one had thought of it before, but King Louis XI (11-1423) was looking for a way to quickly and reliably transmit royal messages to his representatives and soldiers throughout the kingdom – as a reminder, in the 1483th century they had not yet thought of the Internet, let alone the telegraph….
Only at the beginning of the 17th century (i.e., after the death of the king) was the “General Post Office” created – a kind of royal company that managed horse farms and rest stops and transit. A knight with royal authority carried a letter from station to station, changed horses, or even stayed to rest and another knight replaced him if the route was particularly long. It should be noted that during this period the recipient was responsible for payment – you didn’t pay, you didn’t receive the letter.
During the French Revolution – the end of the 18th century – all royal services were nationalized and the postal service became a national service covering the entire territory of the French Republic, with 1400 stations and about 16,000 horses. In 1849, the first postage stamp appeared in France and from now on – the sender pays for the postage, and since the payment is collected in advance, the postal service is opened and available to the entire general public, and not just to the king’s loyalists and servants (who are no longer office holders anyway, and some of them are not even head holders…).
By the mid-19th century, the electric telegraph had already been developed and the load on the telegram lines was increasing. When the people of the Paris Stock Exchange tried to transmit their buying and selling instructions to the stock exchange floors, they encountered a problem – they had to wait in line because there were already many telegrams waiting ahead of them, and as we know – the stock exchange does not wait.
A horse-and-carriage service developed in the 50s, the sole function of which was to convey instructions between the telegraph center (Rue de Grenelle) and the stock exchange (Place de la Bourse). Although the horses sprang off every 19 minutes, the city's traffic congestion prevented them from arriving on time and the stock exchange system was not satisfied.
Against this background, the French inventor Ambroise Ador proposed the use of pneumatic tubes in 1852. At one end station, a telegram form or small package was inserted into a sealed plastic cylinder, and by creating pressure in the pneumatic channels, the cylinder was “pumped” to the next station at very high speed.
Here is a short but very interesting video explaining how this method worked:
For short distances, within the city, this was an excellent solution and was used in Paris (and other large cities around the world) until the end of the 20th century. Today, this public service has disappeared, but is still used by private organizations, mainly banks and hospitals (Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv still operates such a service today for the transfer of documents, medicines and samples).
One more thing: until the early 80s, letters were delivered to every home in Paris twice a day – in the morning, and again in the afternoon (15:00 PM to 18:00 PM). With a bit of luck, you could receive a letter sent in Paris that morning!
“Wormhole” in the 17th arrondissement
I don't know how many of you readers are devoted to the science fiction genre... For those who aren't, a very short and very simplistic explanation. In the mid-20th century, a number of astrophysicists came up with a revolutionary hypothesis: they claimed that just as there is a "black hole" in space, which "swallows" everything into it - matter, emptiness and everything else, there must be, as a response, something that can transport the swallowed matter - mass - from one place to another at a speed many times higher than the speed of light, so as not to violate the principle that matter does not disappear and must be somewhere.
This theory, which has not yet been proven, was christened the “Worm Hole,” and immediately became popular with all science fiction writers. In a simplistic explanation for the general public, it is said that it is an invisible tunnel in space that can transport any mass from one end of space to the other, an immeasurable distance, in the blink of an eye and in fact – at the same moment, without any time difference. One moment you are here, and the next moment you are there….
And why am I telling this?
This is my feeling when I enterMetro in Paris. This morning I left (I bothered to look up at the green cross – 0 degrees) the studio apartment where I live in the heart of Paris, in the 10th arrondissement, entered the underground tunnels of the City of Lights, and after a few minutes I emerged into a completely different world.
I emerged from the ground at a metro station I had never been to – neither now nor in my previous life here. Brochant metro. I had never even heard of it, and I didn’t know that such a station existed. A fairly anonymous station, with no interchanges, with one entrance and one exit. It has the special charm of being in the 17th arrondissement of Paris.
I don’t know how well you know Paris and its districts, but for me, the 17th arrondissement is considered one of the most magical in the city. It doesn’t fit any definition. Say “commercial district” – but it has a lot of residential buildings…. Say “residential district” – but it has a lot of commercial buildings and restaurants and cafes, even if they are all quiet and discreet…. And it has a lot of office buildings, and also schools and so on and so forth….
And yet it is a unique district. The buildings on its streets are in the most typical Haussmann style. The streets are quiet, very solid. You won’t see teenagers running around here, there are no wild young people running and shouting…. After a few hours of walking, I sat down outside, on the terrace of a cafe, and ordered a coffee and a glass of red wine….
At the table across from me, also on the balcony, outside (0 degrees!) wrapped in a red coat, jeans, and green boots, sat a woman – not a girl, but not very old either – lingering with a cigarette in her hand and a bottle of drink on the table. I'm on vacation and my time is up, but she?! Don't they work in Paris?!
Next, I walked towards Cité des Fleurs, which could be translated (a bit loosely) as “City of Flowers.” I’ve written here before about the cute corners I found in the city (The Unknown Paris), lost and unfamiliar, unexpected places in a bustling, noisy, dusty city. And here's another one like that.
A path like it used to be, paved with stones, a private road closed to vehicles that is 5 meters wide and about 300 meters long. On both sides of it are stone and iron fences that hide private yards, but the fence is not high enough to hide it completely.
Behind each metal fence, about ten meters of yard – a garden, if you will – lined with slightly sparse vegetation now (winter!), and only behind it – the beautiful houses, most of them from the 19th century, although here and there, also a few houses that have undergone what we call “evacuation and reconstruction” – a modern house, a little unusual in the landscape, but somehow maintaining the general character.
The roof does not exceed in height, the yard preserves the vegetation area, the fence is the same shape and the same structure is similar to the houses next door…. Let’s call it “building culture,” or if you like, “preserving the character of the neighborhood.” And this is a single 300-meter alley…. Winter is evident here too.
The vegetation is sparse, the trees are green, but they are sparsely branched and leafless, only a few bushes still show green branches. I don't understand enough about horticulture or botany to be precise about this, but maybe someone here has adapted the vegetation to the season? And why not the whole city?
Inside the courtyards – where you can peek (yes, I like to peek into courtyards like this. Whether through gaps in the fences, or through the bars and keyholes, or perhaps even through the openings of the mailboxes), you can see a busy courtyard, here and there signs of flower beds that have been abandoned because of the winter, among them a round, decorative metal table on which four metal chairs lean diagonally, which clearly haven't been used for some time.
Above the table is a parasol – folded up at this time of year – and further on, a few metres further on, the driveway, two or three stone steps… and the house. Each house has its own garden, its own courtyard, although the other courtyards are also visible – I assume the neighbours know each other and are close.
Quiet, peaceful, gray, a lamp is on in the window, here and there a blanket is fanning itself on the windowsill, a cat is stretching on the threshold. As I passed by one of the metal fences, while I paused to take a photo over the fence, a black girl stopped by one of the gates, from under her scarves and buttoned coat she pulled out a single finger and pressed the intercom button, and when she was answered she hissed in French, “Can you open for me, I’m completely frozen.” Apparently a housekeeper, a cook or an opera girl reporting for her day’s work. Indeed, it’s freezing in Paris. At the exit from “Kiryat Ha-Frahim,” there’s another pharmacy. The green cross already shows “1.” Getting warm….
Want more tips for winter in Paris?
I recommend reading the article. Paris in winter , which contains recommendations on what to do when the clock at the pharmacy shows that the temperature is close to zero (or if you are unlucky enough to fall on a particularly rainy day).
I always really enjoy reading the articles and getting a wonderful itinerary for our next trip to Paris.
Alice, thank you very much. I think I enjoy walking around this wonderful city more than you do.
Alice, thank you. Glad you enjoyed reading. I enjoy traveling.
A wonderful article that well expresses the author's love for the city in any temperature, and his fascination with tiny details that go unnoticed by most tourists. The humor woven into the writing also adds great charm.
Thank you, Orit, for your warm – and true – words. Although I live in Tel Aviv, I only feel “at home” in Paris.
It is worth clarifying that the iron/stone protrusions at the entrance to the inner courtyards stem from the fact that the horse and cart almost always arrive from the side and not from the opposite, due to the structure of the street, and therefore the entrance to the courtyard gate is always in a roundabout way, and hence the need for these shields.
A pleasure to read and dream about the next Natiul in Paris