Street Art in Paris 13th Arrondissement: 2026 Guide
2 October 2026
The 13th arrondissement holds the largest murals in Paris. Along Boulevard Vincent-Auriol, social housing towers carry portraits by Shepard Fairey, Inti, Conor Harrington and Seth, many of them visible from the line 6 viaduct.
A few streets away, the Butte-aux-Cailles works at a smaller scale: stencils, paste-ups and village-sized murals. We have geolocated more than 300 works in the district, from thirty-metre walls to poster-sized stencils.
The history of street art in the 13th arrondissement
It started with a gallery. Itinerrance, run by Mehdi Ben Cheikh, opened in the 13th in 2004 and began inviting artists to paint large-format walls from 2009.
The project found lasting support from the district town hall, whose mayor Jérôme Coumet backed the commissions, and from the social landlords who own the buildings, ICF La Sablière first among them. The tall blank gables of the towers built in the 1960s and 1970s offered surfaces no other part of Paris could match.
In 2012, Shepard Fairey painted a red and black portrait up the full height of a building on Rue Jeanne-d'Arc. The following year, Itinerrance ran the project that put the district on the international map: La Tour Paris 13.
The building at 9 Rue Fulton, on the Seine and due for demolition, was handed over to more than a hundred artists from 18 countries, who painted its 36 flats across nine floors. Open to the public from 1 to 31 October 2013, the tower drew around 25,000 visitors, some after queuing for hours, before it was torn down in spring 2014.
After the tower, the gallery turned the route into Boulevard Paris 13, an open-air gallery running from Place d'Italie to Quai de la Gare. Depending on the count, it now gathers around fifty murals by more than thirty artists from about a dozen countries.
Unlike the walls of Belleville, which are repainted constantly, these are long-term commissions: some have stood for more than a decade, and a few have already gone with building renovations.
Top street art spots in the 13th arrondissement
Obey's Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Rue Nationale
This is the most photographed wall in the district. Shepard Fairey painted it in June 2016, during his visit for the Earth Crisis show at Itinerrance, as a response to the 13 November 2015 attacks.
A Marianne with floral patterns is framed by the French national motto, in the blue, white and red of the flag. The mural stands at the corner of Rue Nationale and Boulevard Vincent-Auriol, opposite Nationale metro station.
The two Obey walls on Rue Jeanne-d'Arc
At 93 Rue Jeanne-d'Arc, the red and black woman's portrait from 2012 is the first of Fairey's four pieces in the 13th, in his familiar propaganda-poster style. Further down the same street, at number 60, Delicate Balance dates from the same June 2016 week as the Marianne: a turquoise mandala with the Eiffel Tower in silhouette beneath it.
Inti and Conor Harrington, 83-87 Boulevard Vincent-Auriol
Two of the tallest murals on the boulevard stand side by side. Chilean artist Inti painted La Madre Secular 2 in June 2016, a crowned Virgin figure against blue roses, the second part of a trilogy that began in Marseille and ended in Lisbon.
Next door, Irish painter Conor Harrington produced Embrace and Fight, two men in period dress locked together, roughly thirty metres high. His style borrows from courtly portraiture and leaves it unclear whether the figures are hugging or fighting.
Seth's Enter the Vortex, Boulevard Vincent-Auriol
Seth, real name Julien Malland, has spent years painting children whose faces are never shown. In Enter the Vortex, the figure stands at the centre of a rainbow whirl that covers the whole façade. It is one of the walls line 6 passes closest to, between Chevaleret and Nationale stations.
D*Face and C215 at 167 Boulevard Vincent-Auriol
Two takes on stencil and pop culture share this address. London artist D*Face, a familiar name from Shoreditch, painted Turn Coat, a comic-book face with turquoise hair and red lips. C215, from Vitry-sur-Seine just outside Paris and a long-standing presence in the 13th, added a blue cat in close-up, every strand of fur cut out in stencil.
Butte-aux-Cailles: Miss.Tic, Seth and Jef Aérosol
Up on the hill, the scale drops. The Butte-aux-Cailles is a different setting altogether, with small cobbled streets and low houses. The area also has a long history tied to the Paris Commune, which surfaces in a mosaic by Morèje on Passage Barrault.
Miss.Tic (Radhia Novat, 1956-2022) began painting the walls of Paris in 1985 and made the Butte her home turf through the 1980s. Her stencilled women paired with wordplay, such as Dangereuse sous tous rapports on Rue de la Butte-aux-Cailles, can still be found here. Seth later added many pieces, including the child with a pigeon on Rue Buot, where the birdcage merges into a real window.
Jef Aérosol, known for the small red arrow beside his stencils, painted a large gable on Rue Daviel where a reclining figure hangs above lines by Baudelaire. Newer names keep arriving, such as the parrots by Louyz on Rue de la Butte-aux-Cailles.
Artists associated with the 13th arrondissement
These are the names you will come across most often in the district, on the boulevard and on the Butte alike.
- Shepard Fairey (Obey) - four pieces between 2012 and 2016, including the Marianne on Rue Nationale.
- Seth - one of the most frequent names in the 13th, from the boulevard vortex to the small Rue Buot walls.
- C215 - stencilled portraits and cats scattered across the district, from Rue Nationale to Place Pinel.
- Miss.Tic - pioneer of poetic stencils, active on the Butte from the 1980s.
- Jef Aérosol - black and white portraits signed with a red arrow, on Rue Daviel and Rue Bobillot.
- Inti - La Madre Secular 2, one of the largest walls on Boulevard Vincent-Auriol.
- Conor Harrington - figurative painting drawing on court portraiture, at 87 Boulevard Vincent-Auriol.
- D*Face - comic-style pop art, with three pieces logged in the area.
- Jace - his faceless Gouzou characters turn up on Passage Sigaud and Rue du Moulinet.
- Invader - mosaics along the boulevard, such as PA_299 at 79 Boulevard Vincent-Auriol.
Beyond the boulevard: Jeanne-d'Arc, Masséna and the Left Bank
The route spreads well beyond Boulevard Vincent-Auriol. At 103 Rue Jeanne-d'Arc, Hush painted a geisha whose robe is covered in graffiti patterns.
On Rue du Moulinet, Jace turned a five-storey façade into a Donkey Kong screen, with his red Gouzous playing the characters. Near Porte d'Italie, WEN2 painted a machine tower in the clouds at 10 Boulevard Masséna.
By the Seine, the Paris Rive Gauche district around the François-Mitterrand library hosts more work, such as Child with Fairies by the German duo Herakut on Rue Olivier-Messiaen, and a run of stickers and mosaics by A2. Unlike a museum such as Urban Nation in Berlin, nothing here needs a ticket or opening hours: it is all visible from the pavement.
How to visit
The quickest overview is metro line 6, which runs on a viaduct above Boulevard Vincent-Auriol: take a window seat and the Seth, Obey and Inti walls roll past. On foot, start at Quai de la Gare, walk up Boulevard Vincent-Auriol to Place d'Italie (lines 5, 6 and 7), then head to the Butte-aux-Cailles via Rue Bobillot. Allow two and a half to three hours for the whole loop, stops included.
To plan the walk, the map of street art in Paris pins every work before you set off, and the full list of Paris artworks also covers Belleville, Canal Saint-Martin and Montmartre.
Spotted a mural we are missing, or one that has been painted over? Our records age along with the walls. You can add an artwork in a few minutes, with a photo and its location.
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