Galerie Vivienne

This guide to the Galerie Vivienne in Paris follows an ordinary-looking staircase at number thirteen to the 1840 apartment of Eugène-François Vidocq, a man who had escaped more than twenty prisons before switching sides to run Paris's detective bureau. You'll hear how Victor Hugo folded pieces of Vidocq's story into two of his own characters, and about the bookshop that opened the same year as the gallery and has stayed in one family's hands since 1890. A quiet stop worth lingering at is the mezzanine above it, lit by a chandelier and a spiral stair.