The heart of Paris has shifted east, and you can find it beating wildly in the city’s most densely populated neighborhood. Just next to the lively Marais neighborhood, the Eleventh offers fabulous small restaurants (with new ones popping up every week), along with curated cocktail bars and an abundance of live music. At Bastille you can find a bustling party scene with anything from rock gigs to clubs. As you move east to Oberkampf, La Roquette or Faidherbe, you’ll find authentic, lively neighborhoods where the locals know exactly where to eat, drink and shop at some of the best cocktail bars, restaurants, and indie shops in the city.
Oberkampf / Folie Méricourt
This is the most punk-rock part of the 11th. Anything from night clubs to wine bars and corner bistros, to small local restaurants and dives can be found here. Locals, tourists, students (and our exes…) flock here for a night out, a bomb AF dinner, or some hipstergasmic shopping. For resting in the sun the day after all that partying, nothing beats pretty Square Gardette and the cute streets surrounding one of Paris’ most loved, local pocket-parks.
Bastille / Arsenal / Roquette
Closest to the Marais, Bastille is the most commercial part of the 11th, especially the area immediately surrounding Place de la Bastille. Rue de Lappe, for instance, is party central and a bit too, shall we say, inebriated. For that real arty/industrial vibe we love to love in the 11th, head instead to rue Keller, rue de Charonne, rue Basfroi, rue Popincourt, rue Godefroy Cavaignac and all the discreetly cozy cobblestoned alleyways and passages intertwined throughout.
Faidherbe / Charonne / Aligre
Not a quarter most tourists know about, quartier Faidherbe has almost everything much more famous areas like the Marais do, though more compactly and with about 1000 fewer blasé trendsluts milling about per square yard. OK. it’s not as BEAUTIFUL as the Marais: there are zero hôtels particuliers (stately former mansions from the 1700s) to swoon at, and no dreamy, manicured secret gardens to daydream in, but it holds its own with an authentic middle-class Parisian vibe and its industrial je-ne-sais-quoi. The quarter revolves around the pretty « golden triangle » comprised within Rues Paul Bert, Chanzy and Jean Macé, with neighboring rues Faidherbe, Forge Royale, Saint-Bernard, Trousseau, and Charonne also filled with great places to eat, shop and drink.
