The Temple de la Sibylle
The little Roman temple atop the cliff — the Montmartre sunset view whose coordinates Parisians trade like an open secret.
M.Minderhoud — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Jami430 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Chéret, Jules (1836-1932). Illustrateur — Public domain · Agence Rol. Agence photographique (commanditaire) — Public domain
On a first three-day Paris trip, no; from your second visit or with a full week, it's the local-life experience you'll talk about more than the museums.
The nearby Canal Saint-Martin and Ourcq banks for lunch and cafés, or multicultural Belleville next door — a full northeast day off the tourist map.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
The most dramatic park in Paris and the furthest off the tourist map: twenty-five hectares of genuine hills and slopes, built by Napoleon III in 1867 over abandoned gypsum quarries — the opposite of every flat Paris garden. A fifty-metre rock cliff crowned by a small six-columned Roman temple, a lake wrapped around it, a suspension bridge across the void, and a waterfall inside an artificial grotto with stalactites. This is emphatically the young Parisians' park: northeast-Paris families, runners testing themselves on the gradients, and sunset gatherings on the steep grassy banks — sitting on the grass here is allowed and enthusiastically practised, unlike the city's formal gardens. From the Temple de la Sibylle at the summit, an open view to Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur ranks among Paris's finest free sunsets. It's far from every other landmark — which is exactly why it merits the trip: half a day in the Paris that Parisians actually live.
The little Roman temple atop the cliff — the Montmartre sunset view whose coordinates Parisians trade like an open secret.
A 63-metre bridge crosses the lake to the rock island, and beneath the cliff a grotto hides a waterfall and stalactites — pure 19th-century engineering theatre.
Green slopes that turn into a young-Parisian picnic amphitheatre every sunny afternoon — join with bread and cheese and you won't feel like a tourist.
19th arrondissement, northeast Paris