Bercy: the wine warehouses and the river crossing
A park on the old wine quarter, the surviving stone cellars, Gehry's cinema, and a footbridge to the towers. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Cour Saint-Émilion
Start at the M14 stop and step straight onto the cobbled pedestrian street. Until the 1980s this whole quarter was the city's wine depot; the railway tracks set into the cobbles are the giveaway. Walk west toward the *chais*.

2. Bercy Village (the chais)
The surviving stone *chais* (wine cellars) — long low warehouses now holding shops and cafés. Heritage architecture doing retail duty, which sounds grim and isn't. Good in the rain, since the street is car-free and the awnings are generous.

3. Cinémathèque française
Frank Gehry's tumbling 1994 building — built as the American Center, now the national film archive and museum. Worth going in even for non-cinephiles; the lobby and the Méliès collection reward a wander. Café inside if you need one.

4. Parc de Bercy
Three linked gardens on the old warehouse site — formal *parterres*, a romantic garden with a canal, and orchards where the wine vines once grew. A few old warehouse cobbles and rails survive among the planting. The middle of the walk; slow down.

5. Passerelle Simone-de-Beauvoir
The 2006 footbridge over the Seine — a double curve of timber and steel with no piers in the water. Cross slowly; the deck splits into two levels and the view up and down the river is the best part of the day.

6. Bibliothèque nationale de France
Four glass towers shaped like open books, around a sunken pine wood you can look down into but not enter. Dominique Perrault's 1996 design. The vast wooden esplanade is the end of the walk; the metro is right beneath it.

Bercy: the wine warehouses and the river crossing