Palais Royal
A royal garden, colonnaded arcades, and 300 years of Parisian intrigue in one square.
The Palais Royal is a vast 17th-century palace complex just north of the Louvre that most visitors walk past without realising what's inside. Built for Cardinal Richelieu in 1633 and later home to the Orleans branch of the royal family, it now houses the French Ministry of Culture and the Constitutional Council — but the real draw is the enclosed garden and the elegant colonnaded arcades that wrap around it on three sides. This is one of the great secret spaces of central Paris: a hushed, architecturally coherent world hidden behind an unremarkable entrance off the Rue de Rivoli.
The main garden is long and formal in the French style — gravel paths, clipped lime trees, a central fountain — and the surrounding arcades shelter a mix of antique shops, specialist galleries, jewellers, a few restaurants, and the famous Comédie-Française theatre on its western edge. In the courtyard facing the palace itself, you'll find Daniel Buren's Les Deux Plateaux, the controversial 1986 installation of black-and-white striped columns of varying heights that scandalized Paris at the time and now feels completely at home. Kids love running between them. Photographers love the geometric symmetry.
The garden is free, always open during daylight hours, and completely underused by tourists — which is precisely why you should go. Come in the morning when the antique dealers are just opening their shutters and the light falls clean across the colonnades, or in early evening when Parisians bring their children and the whole place takes on a quiet, neighbourhood feel. The arcades contain a handful of long-running, idiosyncratic shops — including the toy and medal dealers near the north end — that feel genuinely out of time.
