Ah, Paris, City of light and city of love, has seen so many passions in its long history. This Valentine’s Day special edition of our blog is devoted to kissing in the Capital.
Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Fréderic Chopin and George Sand, Victor Hugo and Juliette Drouet, Camille and Lucile Desmoulins, all the way back to Abelard and Héloise. And now you and your darling-dear.
These are just some of the names that have made Paris a byword for all that is romance. While you’re here, you’ll surely want to seal your own love story with a kiss, continuing on with its time-honored tradition. But where? Paris is backdrop-rich in fine settings to consecrate your romance (you might even have a ring in your pocket ready to slip on a certain cherished finger). Romantic places in Paris, France to peck are as abundant as its street numbers, but as always, we at Memories France have uncovered the very best to share with you.
The best places to kiss your loved one in Paris
Artful Kisses
For those of you with artistic leanings why not go to back to the masters?
You might go into the lovely haven of peace that is the Musée Rodin and take inspiration from his sculpture The Kiss, originally inspired by Paolo and Francesca, Dante’s doomed lovers, blown about by their passions ever after in the underworld.
📍77 rue de Varenne 75007 métro Varenne (line 13) or Invalides (line 13, line 8)
The same might be recommended for an embrace inspired from Canova’s Psyche and Cupid (he, god of love with his arrows saves with his kiss the dying goddess of the soul) in the Louvre, whose lips are eternally on the threshold of meeting. You and your sweetheart can make that promised kiss a reality.
📍Louvre Museum, Denon wing, rez-de-chaussée, galerie (salle 403).
Plan ahead for a kiss in the Musée de la Vie Romantique, which may be closed for renovations right now, but the wait will make it that much more delicious. Reopening in March of 2026, the courtyard of this monument to the loves and lives of the Romantic côterie of Paris has a café that is prime kissing real estate.
📍 16 rue Chaptal 75009 métro Pigalle lines 2 and 12
Studious Kisses
For those of more bookish bent, you’ll want to perhaps read from a volume carefully chosen from the selections of the following addresses:
Try the courtyard the turreted medieval Forney Library in the Marais, where the Queen Margot received the young lovers who dueled for her favors. Perhaps this passion will inspire you to less bloody exploits in your beauty’s name.
📍1 rue du Figuier 75004 métro line 1 Saint-Paul
The prestigious Delamain bookshop, founded in 1708 is known as the oldest in Paris. Take your darling in your arms right after a tipple of French courage in the Nemours café nearby, or just post kiss for an Armagnac to settle your emotions.
📍155 rue Saint-Honoré 75001 métro Line 1 Palais-Royal-Musée du Louvre
Shakespeare and Company houses wandering poets to this day- why not rhyme a couple of couplets to your beloved before stealing a kiss. Should you need to repent this thievery, Notre Dame is right there to go to confession afterward, offered in multiple languages.
📍 37 rue de la Bûcherie, 75005, métro: Line 4, Saint-Michel or Cité or Line 10, Cluny La Sorbonne
Movie Kisses
What better place than a darkened movie house? A kiss worthy of the silver screen (Cannes or Hollywood, your choice) could be stolen or offered in cinematic style.
Get an Oscar or a Palme d’or for your lead when sitting in the Luxor, built to impress in 1921 and steeped in an imagined ancient Egypt in the wake of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The person in the role of your love interest should warm to the part easily. Rest easy, no curse is attached.
📍170 boulevard de Magenta 75010, métro Barbès Rochechouart line 2 and 4
The Art Deco setting of the great Rex theater, built in 1932, which opened its doors forThe Three Musketeers. Romantic daring is thus de rigueur here and a kiss once the lights go down is expected.
📍1 boulevard Poissonnière 75002, métro Strasbourg Saint-Denis, lines 4, 8 and 9
With its forays into plays and performance art, the Ranelagh still darkens its rooms for 7th art. It is worth the pilgrimage as its origins are mixed in with the château that a banker had built in the 1720s for his aristocratic mistress. A kiss here promises a long lived affair.
📍5 rue des Vignes, 75016, métro Line 9 – La Muette or Line 6 – Passy.
Death Defying Kisses
Kisses that laugh in the face of our ultimate fate, kisses that promise eternity, can be had in Paris’s many cemeteries.
Wander amongst the pastoral landscaping of Père Lachaise to find two particular and spectacular graves, It has several points of entry, among them 16 rue du Repos.
📍Métro Philippe Auguste (ligne 2) or two entries with stairs Métro Père-Lachaise (ligne 2, 3) Métro Alexandre Dumas (ligne 2) 75020
Héloïse and Abelard, left bank intellectuals of the Middle Ages and starcrossed lovers. Separated in life, the well-named Romantic era saw them reunited in the tomb – “never was there a story of more woe.”
📍7th division (first allée on the right entering via the the boulevard de Ménilmontant,métro Philippe Auguste (ligne 2).
Oscar Wilde, martyr to the love that dare not speak its name as he described his own for the very man who sent him to his doom, died in infamy. But now the glass protection over his monument is to protect it from the many traces of lipstick kisses left on it from his admirers of today.
📍Division 89.
In the Cimetière de Montparnasse, division 20, you’ll find many touching graves but perhaps none more than the single tomb shared by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, existentialist philosophers whose thinking and open relationship shook up the intelligentsia of the earlier twentieth century. Make a pilgrimage afterward to the iconic café/brasserie La Rotonde, above which the feminist author of The Second Sex was born.
📍Entry to the cemetery boulevard Edgar-Quinet. 75014, métro Vavin Auguste, line 4 or rue Froidevaux. métro Gaité line 13
High Flying Kisses
Looking for romantic sights in Paris that are guaranteed to thrill? For those whose proclivities lean to the adventuresome, there are kisses in the clouds, or almost.
A kiss the heights of the Eiffel Tower, symbol par excellence of Paris’s world famous charm might make your heady dreams of love come true.
📍Champs de Mars, Avenue Gustave Eiffel, 75007 métro Trocadéro (line 9) and Ecole Militaire (line 8)
Notre Dame’s towers, due to reopen to the public in 2025, are a long climb, but once you have the chimerae and gargoyles at your feet, cast your kisses on a wing and a prayer to your chéri.e. Beware of hunchbacks !
📍6 parvis Notre Dame, 75004, métro cité line 4
Kisses to go Down in History
Ah, for a kiss out of the past that promises the future head to these romantic locations in Paris.
The Square René-Viviani is a fine place to rendez-vous, next to Shaksepeare and Company and the venerable Saint Julien-le-Pauvre, with the oldest tree in Paris, planted in 1601 or 1602. The shade of this black locust or false acacia (Robinia pseudoacacia) will offer benediction on those who kiss there with pure hearts.
📍2 rue du Fouarre 75005, métro Cluny-La Sorbonne, line 10
For another place the swears to long lasting love, find the Marais square of the Square Georges Cain, near the Carnavalet museum, and kiss under the ten meter high fig tree, over a century old.
📍 8 rue Payenne 75003, métro Saint-Paul ligne 1
Or if you don’t care a fig for yesterday’s botany try an ethereal kiss by the light the 13th century Sainte-Chapelle’s famed walls of stained glass. Reflections of red and blue will dot the floor in summer, while winter guarantees a thick swirl of purple, either is perfect for a kiss’s immortal declaration.
📍 10 boulevard du Palais, 75001, métro Cité line 4.
Open Air Kisses
A peck on cheek, hand, or lip.
“I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places – the carrousel, the wishing well..." Another old song sings the romance of these childrens rides. Love brings back a childlike wonder, so climb abord two parallel fantasy horses and lean across for a kiss. There are many in Paris, Montmartre, the Tuileries, the Eiffel Tower and more, but we have weakness for that of the Luxembourg Gardens, which is Paris’s oldest, built in 1879 by Charles Garnier, architect of the opera of his name.
📍Jardin du Luxembourg, 75006, RER B Luxembourg or from the opposite direction, Notre Dame des Champs line 12
Cat got your tongue? You can take a cue from the Je t’aime wall, and, no matter what your crush’s mother tongue, read out your feelings to your crush in some 200+ languages, from French and English to Bambara and Inuit, even Esperanto in a last ditch effort. Although of course, a kiss defies the limits of language.
📍 Square Jehan Rictus, place des Abbessses in Montmartre, 75018, métro Abbesses, line 12
The Pont des Arts had some rogue folklore invented a few years back, purporting that putting a lock on the metal guardrails of this bridge would bode well for a relationship. The locks had to go in order to prevent this beautiful footbridge, that connects the Institut de France and the Louvre, from crashing into the Seine under their weight. But while the brief fad may be gone, this pedestrian bridge with its view over the Seine is still an exceptional setting for an unforgettable kiss that promises far more than faux-wisdom ever could.
Delicious Kisses
While Paris’s restaurant’s are crammed on Day V, and thus their quality can often suffer, we do think here at Memories France that gustative pleasures go perfectly with kisses, so here are a few seasonal treats to reserve en couple for February 14th, or anytime, since love knows no season.
Chocolate’s endorphins imitate those of falling in love, it would seem, so why not buy some specialty chocolate and kiss the traces of the stuff of your sweet one’s lips. Two of our favorites: La Manufacture of Chef Alain Ducasse is a wonderful place to visit, especially at this time of year when you can pick up some of their special Valentine's chocolates
📍40 rue de la Roquette, 75011 Paris
Or the chocolatier of Marie-Antoinette, set up in 1800 by the King's pharmacist, who prepared special chocolates for Queen Marie-Antoinette that she would eat to ease the bitterness of her headache medicine. You can still buy her 'pistoles' today.
📍Debauve & Gallet, 30 rue des Saints Pères, 75007 Paris
Why not dine with your loved one on the Eiffel Tower? Madame Brasserie offers a special Valentine's menu in their restaurant on the first floor with sweeping views over the city.
📍Madame Brasserie, restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, 75007 Paris
You might dress up and go on a Champagne dinner cruise over the Seine with the Bateaux Parisiens who sponsor a Valentine’s Day do on the evening of the 14th,
📍 At the foot of the Eiffel Tower,Port de la Bourdonnais,75007 Paris
Departure of the boat: 8:30 p.m. Return to quay: 11:00 p.m.End of the service: midnight. Correct outfit required.
You can’t miss with a kiss in the Capital, for while kiss is just a kiss, they say, we’ll always have Paris.
Angelissa, Siobhan and the Memories France family 🧡
