La Villette is what Paris did with its old meat district: keep the iron halls, run a canal straight through, and hand the rest to an architect with a grid and a colour. Bernard Tschumi's red folies stand across the lawns like a thought experiment; Jean Nouvel's Philharmonie and the mirrored Géode bookend the nineteenth arrondissement's biggest green space.
Three and a bit kilometres, flat, post-industrial in the best sense. Start at the Philharmonie by Porte de Pantin — climb the outside if you've no ticket. Then north into the park, where the folies give you something to aim for: pick one, climb it, the grid does the rest.
The Canal de l'Ourcq is the spine. Cross it on foot, or take the small ferry that ties the two MK2 cinemas together across the water — a film and a boat in one trip. On the far bank the Géode sphere holds the whole park in its mirror, and the Cité des Sciences fills the old slaughterhouse hall.
End by Le Zénith and walk on to Corentin Cariou for the M7.
