This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
Sunlight filters through swaying trees, starlings flit between neat hedges and a man trots after an errant golden retriever, which is making a beeline for the reflecting pool. It’s difficult to believe I’m standing on a railway viaduct in the 12th arrondissement of Paris.
Ten metres below, life continues as normal: cars take turns to pause one by one at a zebra crossing as shoppers mill between the high-end glassblowers’ galleries and ceramic workshops of the Viaduc des Arts, seemingly oblivious to the green ribbon of cherry trees, maples and bamboo running three storeys above their heads.
But this is, in reality, one of the city’s worst-kept secrets. The inspiration for the New York High Line, the Coulée Verte René-Dumont, or Promenade Plantée as it’s become known, was the world’s first elevated urban park when it opened in the late 1980s — a joint effort from landscaper Jacques Vergely and architect Philippe Mathieux. Stretching for just over three miles between Opéra Bastille and Bois de Vincennes on the obsolete Vincennes train line, it now holds a special place in Parisian hearts.
“It’s so high up that you’d never know it was here, and at one time it was totally unique,” says Aloïs, a Tours by Locals guide and former resident of the 12th arrondissement. “When I used to live in this neighbourhood, I’d go jogging up here to get away from the traffic,” she says, tying her auburn hair into a ponytail with a pink ribbon as a warm late-summer’s breeze washes in over the railings.
The Coulée Verte and its little sister, La Petite Ceinture, have only a few sections safe enough to be open to the public.
Photograph by Jonathan Stokes
Paris plans to become — quite literally — one of Europe’s greenest capitals, with current mayor Anne Hidalgo promising a “massive greening” when she was elected. This has already started, with the plan to plant 170,000 trees by 2026 underway, in an effort to create urban forests across the city. By 2030, city authorities want half of Paris covered in planted areas, whether they’re parkland or living rooftops.
Our plan today is to walk the Coulée Verte and then find its little sister La Petite Ceinture — another former train line that’s currently part community garden, part secret passage into the city’s underbelly. Translating as the ‘Little Belt’, this rewilded railroad circles Paris, but with only a few sections safe enough to open to the public — thanks in part to the active electrical lines that remain in places.
But first we set off to explore the city along the Coulée Verte, passing through several ivy-covered arches, level with the treetops, church spires and roofs of elegant Haussmann apartment blocks on either side. On the right, the 1991 Commissariat de Police building on Avenue Daumesnil comes into view, adorned with a troop of identical carved stone figures tugging exasperatedly at their tousled hair, each with one elbow raised to the sky — inspired by Michelangelo’s Dying Slave sculpture in the Louvre. Down on the street, I would have barely noticed them.
Soon, the path descends to the Jardin de Reuilly, where we find the lawns dotted with picnickers, and we stumble across a local celebrity: La Pétillante, or ‘She Who Sparkles’. There are many ornate cast-iron water fountains across Paris, but this one is a little different. It dispenses fizzy water and was installed over a decade ago to cut down on single-use plastics. We watch as a man with a copy of Le Monde newspaper under one arm fills up his bottle. “Voilà, you see the bubbles?” says Aloïs, gesturing enthusiastically.
The future of the railroad seems uncertain, but many are calling for the entire stretch to be opened to pedestrians.
Photograph by Jonathan Stokes
From here, via the echoey stretches of dark railway tunnel signalling the end of the Coulée Verte, we head off in search of La Petite Ceinture in the 18th arrondissement. Circling the city in a rattling orbit from 1862, the Little Belt predates the Paris Metro by several decades and was eventually made obsolete by it, its trains whistling their final fond farewells shortly after the Metro’s 1900 launch. After La Petite Ceinture’s closure, in rushed the flora, fauna and street artists, the abandoned stations eventually becoming almost apocalyptic-looking, the tunnels and tracks accented with wildflowers and neon-bright graffiti tags.
Parisians are divided on what to do with this ghost line. Some are calling to preserve its biodiversity and open up the entire stretch to pedestrians, while others are keen to usher in the housing developers. For now, while city authorities are still deciding what to do with it, it runs in a broken circle, punctuated by chain-link fences beyond which only urban explorers make illicit trips into the 18th-century catacombs.
Initially, La Petit Ceinture proves difficult for us to find. “How do we get down there?” Aloïs calls from an overpass as we peer down at the people walking on former train platforms. “By the Metro,” comes the response from below, so we set off towards La Recyclerie — a train station in its past life, which has been repurposed into an industrial cafe, urban farm and recycling workshop that attracts hip young Parisians from miles around. Today there’s a craft fair being held beside the rails, and it’s so popular that the queue to get in meanders onto the street. Inside the former station, Gallic chatter and the clattering of cutlery is punctuated by the whirring of a tattoo gun.
We step out of La Recyclerie’s back door and into a melee of vintage clothes rails and jewellery stalls, set up around bug hotels and compost heaps. “Many people want La Petite Ceinture to become like the Coulée Vert,” Aloïs says as we descend towards the tracks, passing clucking chickens fed on scraps from the kitchens. “Lots of us want it to open all the way around. I’d like it to be open; it could be a gigantic green space available to all of us Parisians.”
How to do it:
Aloïs’s one-and-a-half-hour ‘off the beaten path’ tour costs £160 for up to six with Tours by Locals. La Petite Ceinture’s website also has information on the sections open to the public and how to access them.
Stay at Hôtel des Grandes Écoles, not far from the Coulée Vert, from €280 (£240), B&B.
Published in the June 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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