Walk through occupied Paris: how the tour revealed the city from a new side
I love walking tours and always recommend starting with them to explore a new city.
It can be anything—gastro tour, history, art—as long as you go outside with a local and start asking questions. In addition, you can ask the guide for proven tips on restaurants, museums and city navigation - an obvious plus for an independent traveler.
My first "walking" experience came back in 2006 on a free walk from the hostel in Prague - since then I have been hooked on this format. Over the years, hundreds of tours from dozens of companies have gathered, and one of my favorite is Context Travel.
The company started in 2003, and I began using their programs from 2010, when I first got on their tour in Rome: a walk with an art historian in the Vatican, where I learned not only about the places, but also about the stories behind the paintings and sculptures. I've been with them more than once since.
What distinguishes Context is that they do not recruit “ordinary” guides, but invite specialists with an MA or PhD level. So you're not going for a walk with a talkative actor, you're going for a walk with someone who's really exploring the subject and can tell the details that are usually omitted. On a recent visit to Paris, I signed up for their tour of World War II Paris history - the Context's Paris WWII History Tour - and it was a different level of perception of the city.
I have known Paris for a long time – I have been coming here for about 15 years, lived there for a short time and, it seems, made more than 50 excursions around the city. My personal interests lie in the 1920s (I’m a jazz-era fan) and the Middle Ages, so World War II wasn’t a topic for me. I knew the generals, but not the facts and local stories - so I decided to take this tour to fill in the gaps.
The route turned out to be thoughtful: from Saint-Germain through the Luxembourg Gardens to the Latin Quarter, then to the Marais and the finish at the Hotel de Ville. In about three hours we went through the chronology of the occupation: how the Germans entered the city so quickly, how the daily life of the Parisians changed, the formation and work of the Resistance, the fate of the Jewish population and, finally, the liberation of the city in August 1944. All this is told not as a dry lecture, but as a live story unfolding before your eyes as you walk through the streets where the events took place.
My guide, Gilles, turned out to be the perfect guide: he has lived in France for almost twenty years, has a degree in political science and literature, and has been on tour for more than a decade. He showed old photos and authentic documents on a tablet, told little-known facts and linked them to specific houses and streets. The stop at the current Mandarin Oriental, the former Gestapo headquarters, was particularly ominous and graphic. The tour moved step by step through time, and I constantly caught myself thinking that I was seeing Paris in a new way.
For those traveling on their own, such tours are a godsend: you get context, maps in your head and a list of places to explore further. And with an experienced local guide, complex topics become clearer and more emotionally rich – and you leave not just with facts, but with stories that you want to tell others.
Source of information: personalguide
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