Rue de la Huchette, Paris 5th

The street in short

Rue de la Huchette runs for 164 metres in the 5th arrondissement, between boulevard Saint-Michel and rue du Petit-Pont, facing Notre-Dame across the river. It is narrow and almost entirely pedestrian. According to Wikipedia, it has one of the highest concentrations of restaurants in Paris, with Greek cooking in the majority, and it also holds pubs and bars.

Two institutions give it a second life after dark. The Théâtre de la Huchette, at no. 23, plays Ionesco; the Caveau de la Huchette, at no. 5, is a jazz and swing cellar that calls itself the “temple of swing”. A scene of “La La Land” was filmed in the Caveau, and the club is said to have inspired Alan Sytner’s Cavern Club in Liverpool.

Photo: Sini Merikallio, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

An evening at the theatre or the cellar

From Tuesday to Saturday, La Cantatrice chauve starts at 7 p.m., La Leçon at 8 p.m. and “WALT, la folie Disney” at 9 p.m. The room is small, and the combined ticket for the two Ionesco plays is the only price we found outside the booking module.

The Caveau needs no reservation. An orchestra plays every evening and the first set begins at 9.30 p.m.; on Fridays and Saturdays the club stays open until 4 a.m. Its age is told two ways: the club’s own site says “every evening since 1946”, while Wikipedia dates its creation to 1948, so we give no year.

Details to look up at street level

Look at no. 14 for the Y-shaped sign, and follow the narrow Chat-qui-Pêche lane down to the quay. Napoleon Bonaparte lived at no. 10 in 1795, according to Wikipedia, which also records that Charles Aznavour spent part of his childhood in the street, where his parents ran a restaurant, and that in August 1944 the resistance held a “fortin de la Huchette” covering the approaches to the police headquarters. Ernest Hemingway is said to have stayed several times in the 1930s at the Hôtel du Mont-Blanc, at no. 28.

Photo: Celette, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Getting there, and the line 4 closure

The street opens on place Saint-Michel, so the nearest stop is Saint-Michel – Notre-Dame, about 67 metres away as the crow flies. The metro station (line 4) is closed there from 14 September to 19 December 2026; the City’s notice does not cover the RER B and C. Cluny – La Sorbonne on line 10 is about 238 metres away and Cité on line 4 about 248 metres. The theatre also gives bus lines 21, 27, 38, 85 and 96, which stop at Saint-Michel.

Choosing your moment

The street is public and open at all hours, but it has two schedules. In the day it is a lane of restaurants; from 7 p.m., Tuesday to Saturday, the theatre begins its sequence of shows, and the Caveau takes over from 9.30 p.m., every evening, until 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. A dinner on the street followed by La Cantatrice chauve at 7 p.m., then the first set at the Caveau, is a sequence of three addresses within 164 metres. The Caveau is shut for works from Monday 30 November to Monday 14 December 2026 inclusive, a date we read on its site on 4 October. The theatre has no Sunday or Monday performance.

What the street was before the restaurants

According to Wikipedia, the street was known from the end of the Middle Ages for its inns and, in the seventeenth century, for its roasting shops. Wikipedia gives its length as 164 metres and its width as 10 metres, and notes that it keeps many old houses with details such as the Y sign at no. 14. The nickname “rue des Rôtisseurs” and the “clos de Laas” vineyard through which it was laid out around 1210 explain the food trade that still lines it today.

The cellar and what is said about it

Wikipedia dates the Caveau de la Huchette to 1948 and its life as a jazz club to 1949, whereas the club’s own site says “every evening since 1946”; the two cannot be reconciled, and we cite both. The same article reports a legend that the cellar served as a meeting place of the Templars, the Rosicrucians and then the freemasons, and that secret trials took place there during the Revolution. These are stories, not documented facts, and we give them as such. What Wikipedia does record is the list of musicians who have played in the Caveau, among them Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Art Blakey, Memphis Slim and Claude Bolling.

Combining the street with other visits

Distances are as the crow flies from the street, with walking times by the site’s method (direct distance × 1.3 at 80 metres a minute).

• Shakespeare and Company: 113 metres, about 2 minutes.
• Saint-Séverin church: 137 metres, about 2 minutes.
• Notre-Dame cathedral: 236 metres, about 4 minutes.
• Cluny Museum: 327 metres, about 5 minutes.
• Sorbonne: 385 metres, about 6 minutes.
• Panthéon: 783 metres, about 13 minutes.
• Luxembourg Gardens: 914 metres, about 15 minutes.

The bouquinistes start on the quai at the foot of the street.

Sleeping on the street and around it

Measured from the street itself, as the crow flies, the closest hotels are Les Rives de Notre Dame, about 28 metres away, the Hôtel Mont-Blanc, 53 metres, the Hôtel Notre Dame Saint-Michel, 65 metres, and the Hôtel Albe Saint-Michel, 67 metres. The Hôtel Europe Saint Séverin is about 99 metres away. The Caveau closes at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m., so ask the hotel which side its rooms face.

Our page on hotels near Saint-Michel compares them; for the neighbouring monuments, see Saint-Séverin church and the Latin Quarter guide.