Español
Français
Italiano
Walking route through Paris: the Seine embankments
The Seine embankments through the centre are a World Heritage site, and you can walk them end to end without crossing a single busy avenue. It is the best way to understand the city: almost everything worth seeing is less than ten minutes from the water.
The stretch worth walking
From the Pont Alexandre III to the Pont Neuf is a little over half an hour along the bank, almost all of it at water level and away from traffic. Do it in the late afternoon and you finish with the embankments lit. You can extend it to the Eiffel Tower at one end or the Île Saint-Louis at the other, depending on how your legs hold up.
The bridges worth stopping at
The Pont Alexandre III is the most ornate in the city, with its gilded columns and lamps: at sunset it is probably the best spot in Paris for a photograph. The Pont Neuf, despite its name, is the oldest still standing. And the Pont des Arts, pedestrian and wooden, crosses right in front of the Louvre.
And then, from the water
After walking the embankments, the cruise closes the loop: you cover the same stretch from below, seeing the bridges from under their arches and the full facades that are foreshortened from the bank. Doing both on the same day, first on foot and then on the water, is the best way to get to know central Paris.
Seine river cruise at night and at sunset Paris in one day: an hour-by-hour itinerary