The 15e arrondissement is named Vaugirard, after the former village of Vaugirard that was annexed into the city of Paris in the 19th century. It’s one of the largest arrondissements of Paris, and would be the largest if the large wooded parks Bois de Vincennes and Bois de Boulogne weren’t included in the 12e and 16e arrondissements respectively. The 15e is also the most populous.
It’s another area with few tourists since there aren’t any major attractions. But the area has some beautiful parks, some amazing neighbourhood restaurants and a few surprise finds.
The tallest building in Paris… is empty
Completed in 1973, Tour Montparnasse remains the tallest building within the Paris city limits at 59 floors and a height of 210 metres. (Although still much shorter than the Eiffel Tower which stands 330 metres tall.) The plain, monolithic architecture of Tour Montparnasse towering over the otherwise uniform fabric of the city was so controversial that Paris banned buildings over 12 storeys. (This ban was lifted in 2010 only to be reinstated in 2023 after another controversial skyscraper was built in the 15e.)
Tour Montparnasse can be seen from almost everywhere in Paris and it’s hard to disagree that it’s very much out of place.
The building has been unoccupied since March 31, 2026 and the panoramic observatory at the top has also been closed, pending a complete renovation of the building. Original plans were ambitious, turning the black building into a more transparent tower with an urban farm greenhouse and more park space. However it seems those plans have been abandoned and plans for a less costly renovation have yet to be unveiled.
The best pizza in Paris
It’s been a long time since we’ve had proper pizza, so we did a lot of research to find some proper Italian pizza. Guillaume Grasso’s La Vera Pizza Napoletana gets consistently ranked not only among the pizza in Paris, but among the best 50 in all of Europe.
We made reservations for lunch, because despite us being the only tourists in the small restaurant, it fills up with locals on lunch break. From the moment we walked in, it felt like being among friends, with Guillaume Grasso at the wood-fired pizza oven, a waitress serving the tables and a lovely young Italian man serving drinks and helping with service. There was some lovely banter between the staff over whether we wanted two glasses with our bottle of prosecco, or if we’d be drinking from the bottle with straws.
We ordered an appetizer of grilled eggplant, zucchini and marinated artichoke. We shared the daily pizza special with burrata, eggplant and arugula, and a pizza with anchovies and cherry tomatoes. We finished the meal by sharing a generous serving of tiramisu. And after spending a full two hours enjoying lunch, they brought out the limoncello.
Surprise park, history and architecture
Wandering through the 15e after lunch, we stumbled upon Parc Georges-Brassens, a park that opened in 1984 on the site of a former abattoir and meat market (and before that, the site of vineyards). The park incorporates many structures from the former market, including the gateway (flanked with bull sculptures), the bell tower of the fish market (now surrounded by a pond and boardwalk), and the iron-framed horse market (how a used book market on weekends).
Église Notre-Dame-de-l’Arche-d’Alliance is a modern cube-shaped church built between 1996 and 1999. The building forms a perfect cube, with each side measuring 18 metres, covered with a steel frame. There’s a matching steel framework bell tower.
An impromptu balloon ride
Parc André-Citroën opened in 1992 on the site of a former Citroën automobile plant. It features two large greenhouses, a large canal with reflecting pools and fountains, a large grassy area as well as smaller, more secluded areas.
Since 1999, the park has been home to the Ballon Generali, a tethered helium balloon that lifts visitors to a height of 150 metres for a spectacular view of Paris. The balloon also takes air quality measurements. We hadn’t known about the balloon before arriving at the park, so we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to take a ride.
The pyramid-shaped building in the photo above, Tour Triangle, is the 180-metre tower that led to reinstating the ban on tall buildings in Paris. It was the first skyscraper built in Paris since Tour Montparnasse.
A mini Statue of Liberty
Nestled on a small artificial island in the Seine, Île aux Cygnes, is a quarter-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty. It was given to Paris in 1889 by Parisian expatriates in the United States to mark the centennial of the French Revolution (coming only 3 years after the one in New York was inaugurated).
A Michelin-rated five-course dinner
In researching dinner restaurants, we stumbled upon the highly regarded Radis Beurre, coincidentally also in the 15e arrondissement. It’s a bistrot gastronomique that offers a tasting menu of elevated traditional fare, and has been awarded a Bib Gourmand in the Michelin Guide for the last 9 years. Our menu consisted of corn soup with chicken gizzard, something delicious that we think contained pig’s foot meat and foie gras, seared fish, pork belly with chanterelles and beans, and rice pudding with vanilla-caramel sauce. It was a beautifully relaxed meal stretched out over 3 hours (which naturally required a bottle of white wine for the first 3 courses, and a bottle of red wine for the meat course). It was a splurge, but we’d do it again in a heartbeat. Once again, we were the only tourists in the restaurant.
Our day in the 15e arrondissement was built around carefully researched, top-rated Parisian restaurants that just happened to be located in this area. And in between we stumbled upon some beautiful parks revealing some fascinating history. A perfect area to feed the soul.
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