La Nouvelle Athènes — "the New Athens" — is the pocket of the 9th where the Romantics actually lived: Chopin at his piano, George Sand in trousers, painters in glass-roofed studios. It's a village of show-off mansions and quiet courtyards, and it ends on the best food street in central Paris. Do it before lunch and let the hill do the work.
Start at Place Saint-Georges, a round place built around a fountain and ringed by the quarter's most theatrical façades. Walk up to the Musée de la Vie romantique, the painter Ary Scheffer's house at the end of a cobbled alley — free to enter, with a garden café that's the real find. Slip into Square d'Orléans, the private court where Chopin and Sand both lodged, then down past Notre-Dame-de-Lorette and its painted ceilings.
Then rue des Martyrs, downhill all the way. This is the working food street — the fromager, the chocolatier, the boulangerie fronts — where the 9th does its actual shopping. Buy something at the bottom and finish at the métro, eating.
