Between June 1940 and August 1944, Paris was occupied by Germany. The physical city remained largely intact, and unlike London or Berlin, Paris was not bombed. The streets, the buildings and the monuments are the same ones the occupying forces used. That is what makes a walk through the city, done properly, such a direct encounter with what happened here.
The tour follows the geography of the Occupation, the German headquarters, the Vel d'Hiv roundup site, the buildings where the Resistance operated, the streets where the Liberation was fought. It is not a comfortable walk, and it is not designed to be. Paris carries this history in plain sight, for those who know where to look.
What you will see
The map of the Occupation. The hotels and public buildings the German administration took over, and what those choices reveal about how the Occupation was run, and the site of the Vélodrome d'Hiver, where more than thirteen thousand Jews were held in July 1942 before deportation, now marked by a memorial.
Resistance and Liberation. The safe houses, printing presses and escape routes of the Resistance networks, and the people who ran them at extreme personal risk, then the street fighting and barricades of August 1944, and the tangled question of who liberated Paris and how the story was later told.
The sites of the Occupation · the Vel d'Hiv · the Liberation
Pépin's advice
This tour is not light entertainment. The Occupation deserves serious treatment, and the tour does not flinch from the collaboration, the deportations, or the complexity of what Parisians did and did not do during those four years.
It pairs well with the Musée Carnavalet. The museum has a substantial section on the Occupation and the Liberation, and seeing the objects and documents after the walk gives them a different weight.
Good to know
This is an outdoor walk on old streets, with cobblestones in places and few chances to sit along the way, so comfortable shoes make all the difference. Any museum you choose to add keeps its own opening days, which we confirm with you beforehand.
