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France > Paris > West > Passy > East to the Musée du Vin and Pont de Bir-Hakeim

Musée du Vin  : Click to enlarge picture
Musée du Vin
From rue d'Ankara, head northeast along avenue Marcel-Proust, turn right and then left onto rue Charles Dickens and follow it until it hits rue des Eaux. Rue des Eaux was where fashionable Parisians used to come in the eighteenth century for the therapeutic benefits of the once-famous ferruginous and sulphuric Passy waters. Today, the street is enclosed by a canyon of moneyed apartments, which dwarf the eighteenth-century houses of square Charles-Dickens. In one of them, burrowing back into the cellars of a vanished, fourteenth-century monastery, which produced wine until the Revolution, is the Musée du Vin (daily except Mon 10am–6pm; €6.50, admission includes a glass of wine; www.museeduvinparis.com). The exhibition itself is rather disappointing – viticultural bits and bobs, such as an array of corkscrews dating back two hundred years, some of them looking more like instruments of torture. It's worth a visit, however, for the extensive stone vaulted cellars and passages that connect to the ancient quarry tunnels – not visitable – from which the stone for Notre-Dame was hewn. The visit includes a dégustation – you might try the museum's own wine, Château Labastidié, a fine, blackcurranty tipple produced in the southwest. The place also has a restaurant, or you can just come in for a glass of wine and some cheese between 3pm and 5pm.

Back on rue Raynouard, head northeast to place du Costa-Rica, take the first right into rue de l'Alboni and go down the steps into square Alboni, a patch of garden enclosed by tall apartment buildings as solid as banks. Here the métro line emerges from what used to be a vine-covered hillside for the Passy stop – more like a country station – before rumbling out across the river by the Pont de Bir-Hakeim, the distinctive bridge famously featured in the racy Bertolucci film Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando. From here you're well placed to hop back onto the métro, or cross the bridge and head north along the water to the Eiffel Tower about 500m along.


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