Rue Mouffetard

Rue Mouffetard is a street running 605 meters through the 5th arrondissement, passing through several historic neighborhoods and combining shops, restaurants, and cafés along its length. The street maintains a traditional market function with vendors selling fresh produce, cheese, and baked goods most days of the week.

This street traces an ancient Roman route that connected the Left Bank southward to Italy and remained a major transportation artery for over two thousand years. During the medieval period, the surrounding neighborhood developed around this trade route, and the street kept its importance as a commercial and transport corridor through to today.

This street remains the center of everyday life in the neighborhood, where residents gather for shopping and locals fill the restaurants and cafés throughout the day. You can observe how Parisians organize their routines around the daily rhythm of buying fresh goods and meeting acquaintances on the sidewalk.

This street is best explored on foot since it is narrow and animated, with the southern section being the most active with market stalls and eating places. Visiting in the morning or early on weekends helps avoid crowds and lets you see the street during its regular daytime flow.

A water well from 1624 stands at the junction with Rue du Pot and shows how long this area has been continuously inhabited and used. This small monument is often overlooked even though it is one of the few visible traces from this early period of the city's development.

Location: Paris

Location: 5th arrondissement of Paris

Location: Quartier Saint-Victor

Location: Jardin-des-Plantes

Location: Quartier du Val-de-Grâce

Location: Quartier de la Sorbonne

Length: 605 m

Width: 7 m

Part of: road network of Paris

Shares border with: passage des Patriarches, passage des Postes, place de la Contrescarpe, rue Blainville, rue Daubenton, rue de l'Arbalète, rue de l'Épée-de-Bois, rue Descartes, rue du Pot-de-Fer, rue Édouard-Quénu, rue Jean-Calvin, rue Ortolan, rue Saint-Médard, rue Thouin, square Vermenouze, place Georges-Moustaki

GPS coordinates: 48.84194,2.34972

Latest update: December 6, 2025 16:00