Mouzaïa district

La Mouzaïa, in the 19th arrondissement, is a little slice of countryside in Paris, an unusual, flower-filled district that offers an original stroll through the pretty detached houses inhabited by the working-class population at the end of the 19th century.

Ideally located between the Buttes-Chaumont and the Butte du Chapeau Rouge park, the Mouzaïa district is a UFO in Paris. There are no shops, no cars, no tourists, just pedestrian walkways lined with colorful houses, red-brick facades, stone pavilions and endless greenery.

Made up of adozen or so alleyways, the district is built around its main thoroughfare, rue de Mouzaïa . Already in this street, you'll discover some unusual houses, a bucolic atmosphere and a tranquility that's rare in Paris. But it's the lanes that unfold around it that are most surprising: very narrow, entirely cobbled, punctuated by typically Parisian lampposts and made up of pavilions built between the 1880s and 1920s, they give any Parisian with the good sense to pass by achange of scene.