Paris Before Sunset Audio Walking Tour (Self-Guided)

Nine years after one night in Vienna, Jesse is in Paris. He's written a novel about that night, and he's on a book tour. At the end of his reading in a Left Bank bookshop he looks up, and Céline is standing there. He has a car booked for the airport, so they have about an hour. That's Richard Linklater's Before Sunset, from 2004, with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, and it plays out in close to real time: two people walking and talking across Paris before a plane leaves. This is an unofficial film walk, not made with or endorsed by the filmmakers or the studio, and it has spoilers. It's one of our self-guided walking tours, about 4.6 kilometers from Shakespeare and Company to the Promenade Plantée. One warning: the film jumps around Paris, and so do we. We'll reach the ending early, then double back to see how they got there. And bring someone. This is a film about the pleasure of one long conversation, so slow down and have one of your own on the way.

Before you set off

The route takes about 65 minutes of walking, but give it two hours with the stops. Saint-Michel Notre-Dame, on the RER B and C and metro line 4, is a couple of minutes from the start, and Gare de Lyon is a short walk south of the finish. The route is flat, apart from the climb up to the Promenade Plantée at the end. That garden path is gated and keeps opening hours, and its lifts are not always working, so check before you go and plan to arrive before it closes. If it's shut, walk avenue Daumesnil underneath it instead. Céline's courtyard is private and gated, so you'll stand at the street entrance. The courtyard and Le Pure Café are places where people live and work, so stay on the pavement and keep your voices down. The café is a working café: go in for a coffee if you like, but you don't have to. A late afternoon start suits the film's title, but leave time to reach the garden path before it closes.

Shakespeare and Company

You're at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, on the Left Bank, with Notre-Dame across the water. In front of you is Shakespeare and Company, the English-language bookshop. It's open to the public, and it holds at least one free literary event every week.

The film opens inside. Jesse is giving a talk to promote his novel, the book he wrote about one night in Vienna with a French girl. He's nearly finished when he sees her. Céline is standing in the shop. That's the whole setup. He has a plane to catch. They have an hour, give or take, and they spend it walking.

Now, the shop. Many people will tell you this is where Hemingway and Joyce used to hang out. It isn't. That was Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company, which opened in 1919 and from 1921 stood at 12 rue de l'Odéon. It closed in December 1941, during the German Occupation. This shop was opened by George Whitman in 1951, under the name Le Mistral. In April 1964, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, he renamed it Shakespeare and Company in honor of Sylvia Beach. Whitman let writers sleep in the shop. They're known as Tumbleweeds, and he hosted about 30,000 of them. He died on 14 December 2011, aged 98. The shop's own history lists Before Sunset among the films it has appeared in.

When they step outside, the first street they take is rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, and then rue Galande, past the Studio Galande cinema. Early on, they settle the big question. Jesse did go back to Vienna. Céline couldn't, because her grandmother's funeral was that day.

So here's a question to start on: what promise did you once make that you didn't keep? Take it with you. Wander down rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre and along rue Galande if you like, as they do, then come back to the river and walk east along the quai, with Notre-Dame across the water on your left, to the Pont de la Tournelle. About ten minutes.

Quai de la Tournelle

You're on the Quai de la Tournelle, the riverside quay behind Notre-Dame, at the Pont de la Tournelle.

This is a flash-forward. Late in the film, after the garden path on the old railway viaduct, the story is suddenly back on this quay. Jesse and Céline step onto a tourist boat here and ride it to the Quai Henri IV. On the boat, as it slides under the bridges, the mood turns. They start out flirting and end up admitting their regrets to each other. We'll come back to it at the very end.

Here's a trick of the film. It doesn't follow one continuous route. It jump-cuts all over the city: from the Left Bank to the Marais, from the Marais to the 11th arrondissement, and then from the 12th straight back to this river. The very next cut is the most dramatic. In a single splice, the couple leap across the Seine and the Île Saint-Louis into the Marais, walking in the opposite direction. On screen it takes no time at all. You get to walk it.

The film runs about 80 minutes, and it often holds on the two of them for a long time, with takes of several minutes. Roger Ebert put them at six or seven minutes. Every word was scripted, but it had to sound as if it were being made up on the spot. We'll hear how they managed that at the Bastille.

For now, walk the leap the film skips. Cross the Pont de la Tournelle onto the Île Saint-Louis, cross the island on rue des Deux-Ponts, and take the Pont Marie over to the Right Bank. Then cross the riverside road and head east, a block in from the river, to rue des Jardins Saint-Paul, where a long stretch of old stone wall runs beside a sports ground. About ten minutes.

Rue des Jardins Saint-Paul

You're in the Marais, on rue des Jardins Saint-Paul. Look at the old stone wall along the sports ground. That's the longest surviving stretch of the medieval city wall of King Philippe Auguste, about 60 meters of it. The Right Bank wall was built between 1190 and 1209. At the corner of rue Charlemagne you can see what's left of one of its towers, the Tour Montgomery.

This is where Jesse and Céline land after that leap across the river. They reappear here, at the corner of rue de l'Ave Maria, still deep in conversation. Then they turn into rue Charlemagne while Céline talks about her environmental work, and slip through the narrow rue Eginhard to rue Saint-Paul.

It's a lovely piece of the film to stand in. Nine years have gone by, and here they are, two old acquaintances, or maybe something more, catching up in the old streets of the Marais.

Off rue Saint-Paul, covered passages lead into the Village Saint-Paul, a set of courtyards full of antique shops. They're worth a peek if you have time.

And a small thing to try. Walk the next stretch the way they do: side by side, not looking at your phone, and see how far you get before one of you asks a question you'd never ask a stranger.

Follow their path. Walk to rue Charlemagne, through the narrow rue Eginhard, and up rue Saint-Paul to rue Saint-Antoine. Turn right and follow it east to the Place de la Bastille. About ten minutes.