From statues of France’s great men to the status of Black people: the hidden Black history between the Palais Bourbon and the Tuileries.

Between the Palais Bourbon and the Tuileries stand statues honouring some of the great men of French history. This walking tour asks what those monuments leave unsaid: the status of Black people in France, from the Code Noir to decolonisation, much of which was shaped just a few metres away from those very statues.

From the 17th to the 20th century, the route introduces figures too often left out of history books, from Sally Hemings to Blaise Diagne and the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, whose lives reveal another side of the capital’s history.