Five revolutions in eighty years, from the Bastille to the Communards' Wall

1789, 1792, 1830, 1848, 1871: a little over eighty years of barricades, trials and firing squads, from the Place de la Bastille to the Communards' Wall in Père-Lachaise. About three and a half hours on an electric bike in a small group, including some thirty minutes on foot inside the cemetery, with a guide who tells you what the cobbles no longer say.

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Paris went through five revolutions in a little over eighty years: 1789, 1792, 1830, 1848 and 1871. They did not happen in the same place. The Bastille, the Hôtel de Ville, the Conciergerie, Concorde, Père-Lachaise: five sites scattered from one end of the city to the other, slow to link on foot. The electric bike solves that. You move at the right pace, you stop at the foot of the façades, and you set off again without losing twenty minutes underground. The route is easy going and flat almost all the way, the one real climb being up to Père-Lachaise, and the assist does most of the work. Reckon on about sixteen kilometres, partly on streets open to traffic.

This is not a history lesson. It is a run of places where people decided, in the space of a few hours, to change the regime, and where others paid for it. You will see the outline of the fortress set into the cobbles, the façade the Communards chose to burn rather than hand over, the walls of the prison where a queen spent her last seventy-six days, and the square where more than a thousand people were guillotined in a matter of months, before an obelisk was raised on it. Everything is told from the street, the quay, the bridge or the forecourt: no interiors, no entrance fees and nothing to eat or drink are included in the price, and the Conciergerie cell is visited separately, on your own initiative and at your own expense. Between stops we ride along the Seine, the Louvre and the Tuileries, where the monarchy fell on 10 August 1792; that is a passage, not a stop.

The tour can be booked as a shared ride, where you join a small group, or as a private ride for your party alone. Indicative prices, all taxes included: on a shared ride, 75 euros per person; private, 95 euros per person. It is never a group package. The electric bike and the helmet are included. The final price, the date and the meeting point are confirmed to you in writing before any payment, and your request is not yet a firm booking. Each group takes five participants at most per guide. Beyond five participants we may be able to run a second group at the same time, subject to availability, at the same price per person; we confirm that to you in writing. The tour starts in the 7th arrondissement and ends at the entrance to Père-Lachaise, in the 20th, where you hand the bike and helmet back to the guide.

On this ride

Five revolutions in eighty years, from the Bastille to the Communards' Wall

Place de la Bastille

There is no Bastille left: taken down stone by stone after 14 July 1789, the fortress survives only as an outline set into the cobbles, and you have to look for it. On the day it was stormed it held seven prisoners: four forgers, two men confined for mental illness, and the comte de Solages, locked up at his own family's request. Seven inmates, in a fortress that had become the symbol of arbitrary power. And the forty-seven-metre column in the middle of the square does not commemorate 1789: raised between 1835 and 1840 and inaugurated on 28 July 1840, it commemorates the Three Glorious Days of July 1830, whose victims' names are engraved on its shaft and five hundred and four of whose bodies lie beneath its base. That mismatch throws almost every visitor.

Hôtel de Ville

The building in front of you is not the one the revolutions happened in: the Communards set it alight on 23 and 24 May 1871, and it was rebuilt over the following years, the Renaissance façade remade as it was, inaugurated in 1882, with interior decoration running on into the 1890s. The Paris civil registers from before 1860 were lost in that fire and in the fire at the Palais de Justice, where the second set was kept: some eight million records went up in smoke, and the reconstitution ordered by the law of 12 February 1872 recovered only close to three million, which is why nineteenth-century Parisian ancestors are so hard to trace. Everything plays out on this square at every upheaval. On 31 July 1830 Lafayette embraced Louis-Philippe on the balcony and handed France a king. On 25 February 1848 Lamartine refused the red flag here and saved the tricolour. On 4 September 1870 Gambetta proclaimed the Republic here. On 28 March 1871 the Commune was proclaimed here in front of the crowd; it lasted seventy-two days, from 18 March to 28 May.

Conciergerie, from the quay and the bridge

The old palace of the kings of France, enlarged by Philip the Fair, turned into a prison and into the antechamber of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Marie-Antoinette spent her last seventy-six days here, from 2 August to 16 October 1793, in a damp cell watched day and night by two gendarmes; the cell shown inside today is a reconstruction, the real location having been turned into a chapel in 1815. Robespierre was brought here after his arrest during the night of 9 to 10 Thermidor and left on 28 July 1794, the same day, for the scaffold: the carts left the courtyard of the Palais at half past four in the afternoon. The line about cake is apocryphal, it was in circulation before her and was pinned on her only much later. She is said to have told the executioner, after treading on his foot: "Pardon me, sir, I did not mean to do it." The story is told from the quay and the bridge; the interior can only be seen by paying for entry, which is not included in the price.

Place de la Concorde

It was called Place de la Révolution. Louis XVI was executed here on 21 January 1793, Marie-Antoinette on 16 October of the same year, then Danton, and Robespierre on 28 July 1794. Madame Roland is said to have cried, before climbing the scaffold: "O Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name!" More than a thousand people were guillotined here in a matter of months, on the exact spot where people now photograph the Luxor obelisk. It was given in 1830 by Muhammad Ali, landed in Paris on 23 December 1833 and was raised only on 25 October 1836, in front of an enormous crowd: nearly three years between the quayside and the vertical, so the engineering took longer than the voyage.

The Communards' Wall, Père-Lachaise

On 28 May 1871, after several days of fighting waged among the tombs, the last Commune fighters were shot against this boundary wall and thrown into a pit at its foot; tradition puts their number at one hundred and forty-seven. For the whole of the Bloody Week, historians' estimates range from about six thousand to twenty thousand dead, and the debate is not settled. A gathering has been held in front of the wall every year since 1880, the date of the first demonstration, which drew tens of thousands of people two months before the amnesty of the Communards. The cemetery belongs to the City of Paris and its rules forbid cycles inside, even pushed by hand: the bikes stay locked outside, with no attended parking, and this last section is covered on foot, on paths that climb in places. Access, opening hours and movement along the paths are set by the City, and the route is adapted on the day.

Practical details
Duration
About 3 h 30, stops included, of which some thirty minutes on foot in Père-Lachaise; about 16 km
Level
Easy: the route is easy going and the electric assist does most of the work, including the climb up to Père-Lachaise. You need to be able to ride a bike and to be comfortable in Paris traffic, since the route uses streets open to traffic; the cemetery paths are covered on foot and climb in places. Conditions of participation, including the minimum age, are given when you book
Meeting point
Departure in the 7th arrondissement, arrival at the entrance to Père-Lachaise in the 20th, where the bike and helmet are handed back to the guide; the exact meeting address is confirmed to you in writing when you book
Group
5 participants maximum per guide; beyond five, we may be able to run a second group at the same time, subject to availability, at the same price per person, which we confirm to you in writing
Languages
French or English, tell us which you prefer when you book

Booking is a request, not a firm reservation: we confirm feasibility, date, meeting point and the final price in writing before any payment. Prices are indicative, per person, all taxes included, and cover the use of a pedal-assist bike and a helmet. No entrance fees and no indoor visits are included: the stories are told from the street, the forecourt or the bridge.

Frequently asked questions about this ride

Do I need to know French history to follow?

No. Everything is told on the spot, and the guide pitches it to the group's questions. If you already know 1789, there is still 1792, 1830, 1848 and 1871, which get forgotten far more often. The route follows the geography of the city rather than the order of the dates: each place is put back into its chronology at the stop itself.

Is the route hard on a bike?

Reckon on about sixteen kilometres. The route uses cycle lanes and quiet streets as much as possible, but it also goes along streets open to traffic: you need to be able to ride a bike and to be comfortable in Paris traffic. The one real climb, up to Père-Lachaise, is absorbed by the assist. We take a few minutes at the start to get you comfortable on the bike, and the pace follows the group rather than the other way round.

Do we go inside the monuments?

No. The price includes no entrance fees, no interiors and nothing to eat or drink: the stories are told from the street, the quay, the bridge or the forecourt, the Conciergerie included, whose cell can only be seen by paying for entry. At Père-Lachaise the rules of the Paris cemeteries forbid cycles inside, even pushed by hand: the bikes stay locked outside, with no attended parking, and the cemetery is covered on foot, within the opening hours and access conditions set by the City of Paris. Nothing stops you going back later to see whatever caught your eye.

Where does the tour end?

At the entrance to Père-Lachaise, in the 20th arrondissement, where you hand the bike and helmet back to the guide at the end of the stop. The start is in the 7th, so this is not a loop. If you would like to come back to the starting point, say so in your request: that adds about nine kilometres and an hour, we look into whether it is feasible and we answer you in writing with the corresponding price.

How does booking work?

You send us a date, a route and a number of participants: your request is not yet a firm booking. We come back to you with a slot, a meeting point and the exact price including all taxes, confirmed in writing before any payment. Because the tour takes place on an agreed date, it is not covered by the 14-day right of withdrawal (Article L. 221-28, 12° of the French Consumer Code). Our terms and conditions, which name the competent consumer mediator, are linked in the footer.

Other rides
The writers' Left Bank, from the Île Saint-Louis to Saint-Germain-des-Prés Seven stops between the Île Saint-Louis and the streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where people sculpted, wrote, drank a great deal of coffee and put the world to rights out loud. About three hours on an electric bike in a small group, with a break halfway round; anything you order there is at your own expense. Paris of the Artists: Montmartre and Pigalle by electric bike, in a small group Four hours to climb the hill of studios and cabarets, from the boulevard de Clichy to the Clos Montmartre vineyard, with a guide who knows the stories behind the façades. The electric assist takes care of the slopes, and the steepest stretch is done on foot, with the bikes parked at the bottom. Offbeat Paris: covered passages, Belleville and Père-Lachaise by electric bike Four hours in a Paris you do not see from the main avenues: glazed passages from the first half of the nineteenth century, the locks of the Canal Saint-Martin, the Belleville panorama and the alleys of Père-Lachaise. An guided tour for people coming back to Paris, and for Parisians curious about their own city.

Request a booking

Booking is a request, not a firm reservation: we confirm feasibility, date, meeting point and the final price in writing before any payment. Prices are indicative, per person, all taxes included, and cover the use of a pedal-assist bike and a helmet. No entrance fees and no indoor visits are included: the stories are told from the street, the forecourt or the bridge.

Request a booking