The Origins of Paris Turns One: 35,000 Time Travellers
June 2025. On the right-bank quays, facing the Île Saint-Louis, we made a slightly mad bet: what if you could travel back up the thread of time, right there, at the water’s edge, with a simple pair of binoculars over your eyes? One year on, the anniversary comes with numbers that make us proud, and a sequel already under way.
In twelve months, The Origins of Paris has welcomed 35,000 travellers on the banks of the Seine, with a satisfaction rating steady at 4.9/5 and visits in three languages. And the adventure is growing: a second walk, The Symbol of Paris, has opened at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.
A year on the riverbanks, and a rating that will not move
They came from everywhere: Parisians curious to rediscover their city, families on a day out, visitors from the other side of the world. 35,000 travellers in one year, and above all an enthusiasm that never fades; month after month, the rating holds at 4.9 out of 5. For an hour, guided along the Seine, they watch the centuries scroll past: the first fires of Lutetia, the Viking siege, the medieval place de Grève, the flood of 1910.
“We poured all of our craft into this experience, and the public feels it day after day. That loyalty is what gave us the momentum to go further.”
Adrien Sadaka, co-founder of Timescope
What touches us most in the reviews: it is not the technical feats that come up, but the emotion of seeing today’s city and yesterday’s city align exactly, to the metre, on the very spot where you stand.
In the wake of the Olympic ceremony
On 26 July 2024, the opening ceremony of the Paris Games left the stadium for the first time in Olympic history: a six-kilometre river parade on the Seine, from the Pont d’Austerlitz to the Trocadéro, facing the Eiffel Tower. That evening, the whole world discovered what Parisians have known for two thousand years: the Seine is the most beautiful stage in Paris.
Our two walks follow in that wake, literally. The quays of The Origins of Paris are the ones the ceremony’s boats sailed past between the two islands; The Symbol of Paris awaits you where the parade ended, at the foot of the Iron Lady. The ceremony turned the Seine into a stage for one evening; we have it tell its own story every day.
The new chapter, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower
The Champ-de-Mars reconstructed for The Symbol of Paris: battles, revolutionary celebrations and the 1889 World’s Fair.
The lineage flows naturally. At the Origins, the story ends on the reconstructed Pont Neuf, your gaze drawn into the distance by the silhouette of the Iron Lady; it is over there, on the Champ-de-Mars, that The Symbol of Paris begins: the birth of Lutetia, the celebrations of the Revolution, the 1889 World’s Fair and the construction of the Eiffel Tower, relived on the very spot where it all happened. Two walks, two faces of Paris, to experience one after the other, or one and the other.
Practical details
The Origins of Paris: a one-hour guided walk on the right-bank quays of the Seine, between the Pont Louis-Philippe and the Île Saint-Louis, in French, English or Spanish. The Symbol of Paris: one hour at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, on the Champ-de-Mars. All information and bookings are on the two experience pages.
Thank you to the first 35,000 travellers. See you on the riverbanks for what comes next; it is only beginning.