Street Art In The 13th Arrondissement Of Paris

Paris is a city synonymous with art, there are galleries everywhere, from the Louvre, the Pompidou Centre and the Musée D’Orsay, to small boutique galleries.

But some of the best and most vibrant art is not just found inside the gallery walls but out on the streets. Street art and graffiti is everywhere but, rather than seeing it as vandalism, Paris has embraced urban art.

In certain areas, street art has been actively encouraged, and there are places in Paris where you can walk in open air galleries, where huge murals enhance the architecture as the works of famous street artists watch daily life pass by below.

Boulevard Paris 13 Project

One such area can be found in the south of Paris; the 13th arrondissement is full of street art murals. The area was once the industrial centre of Paris, the Bièvre river, which then ran through the southern part of the capital, provided water for industries such as shoemaking, laundry, weaving, dying and leather tanning. By 1912, the Bièvre had been covered up, but you can still follow its course with the little bronze medallions on the ground.

Since the 1960s, this industrial district has seen its facades covered by artists who wanted to make the area more beautiful.

Street Art Gallery

In 2009, the Galerie Itinerrance, which is located in the 13th, in partnership with the Mairie of the 13th arrondissement, started to create a tour of frescoes and murals, painted by French and international artists, which has become an ever-evolving openair museum and street art gallery. Their aim was to introduce urban art to as many people as possible. The Boulevard Paris 13 Project comprises works from some of the big names in street art from around the world including D*Face, Add Fuel, Shepard Fairey (Obey Giant), Hush and many more, there are many large-scale murals and new additions appear regularly. Even as I am writing this article, a new mural from D*Face has just been completed on the Boulevard Vincent Auriol.

Paris Tower 13

In 2013 a social housing tower block in the 13th that was due for destruction became home to a huge, and ephemeral collective art exhibition.

Mehdi Ben Cheikh, founder of the Galerie Itinerrance, invited more than one hundred artists from around the world to take over the building, filling it with art, which was open to the public to view before its final, and spectacular destruction. The documentary ‘Paris Tower 13’, by Thomas Lallier, tells the story of radical art creation, and destruction from the artists’ side and was released in 2016.