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Le Marais: which arrondissement?
Le Marais is not a district of its own: it spreads over the 3rd and 4th arrondissements of Paris. Where the line runs, what lies on each side and what it means for a hotel. Checked October 2026.
Le Marais lies in two arrondissements, the 3rd and the 4th. It is a name of usage, not an administrative unit. The boundaries below come from the Paris administrative districts and from our own database of 70 hotels, 32 in the 3rd and 38 in the 4th.
Why there is no single answer
Parisian arrondissements are divided into administrative districts (quartiers), such as Archives or Saint-Gervais. Le Marais is none of these. The name covers the eastern part of the 3rd and 4th arrondissements, and in wider usage, which this guide follows, it takes in more. Its core is made up of three districts: Archives and Enfants-Rouges in the 3rd, Saint-Gervais in the 4th. Usage adds Arts-et-Métiers, Saint-Merri and the islands.
There is a legal definition too, and it differs again. In 1964 the Marais became the first secteur sauvegardé of France, under the Malraux law: 126 hectares governed by a conservation plan approved on 24 August 1996. That perimeter frames changes to façades and roofs. It is a heritage zone, not an arrondissement.
Since 2020, the first four arrondissements have also formed a single sector, Paris Centre, with one mayor. The town hall of Paris Centre is in the former town hall of the 3rd, at 2 rue Eugène-Spuller, facing the square du Temple. So administratively the two arrondissements now share a roof, though postcodes still differ: 75003 and 75004.
Where the line runs
The boundary between the two runs along rue des Francs-Bourgeois: even numbers are in the 3rd, odd numbers in the 4th. The place des Vosges straddles it; our data puts Le Pavillon de la Reine, at no. 28, in the 3rd and the Maison de Victor Hugo, at no. 6, in the 4th.
Photo: Carreau du Temple, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
| 3rd arrondissement (north) | 4th arrondissement (south) | |
|---|---|---|
| Areas | Haut-Marais, Arts-et-Métiers, Archives, and one hotel of the place des Vosges | Saint-Paul, Hôtel de Ville, rue des Rosiers, the islands, and three hotels of the place des Vosges |
| Hotels in our database | 32 | 38 |
| Metro lines listed for its areas | 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11 | 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 14 |
| Some sights | Musée Picasso, Carnavalet, Cognacq-Jay, Archives nationales, Marché des Enfants-Rouges | Hôtel de Sully, Hôtel de Ville, Village Saint-Paul, Centre Pompidou |
What lies on each side
In the 3rd: the Musée Picasso at 5 rue de Thorigny, the Musée Carnavalet at 23 rue de Sévigné, the Musée Cognacq-Jay at 8 rue Elzévir, the National Archives in the Hôtel de Soubise, the Musée des Arts et Métiers at 60 rue Réaumur, the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme at 71 rue du Temple and the Marché des Enfants-Rouges at 39 rue de Bretagne. The 3rd is the northern half, from the Haut-Marais and its galleries to the Arts-et-Métiers area.
Photo: John Samuel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In the 4th: the Hôtel de Ville, the BHV Marais at 52 rue de Rivoli, the Centre Pompidou on place Georges-Pompidou, closed for works, the Hôtel de Sully at 62 rue Saint-Antoine, the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, the Mémorial de la Shoah and rue des Rosiers. Notre-Dame, on the Île de la Cité, and the Île Saint-Louis are in the 4th too, though they sit at the edge of what most visitors call the Marais.
The two arrondissements in figures
According to Wikipedia, the 3rd arrondissement covers 1.17 square kilometres and had 32,179 inhabitants in 2023, a density of 27,503 per square kilometre. It has four administrative districts: Arts-et-Métiers, Enfants-Rouges, Archives and Sainte-Avoye. It was created in 1860, is served by metro lines 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 11, and holds the house of Nicolas Flamel, dated 1407 and described as the oldest dated building in Paris.
The 4th covers 1.60 square kilometres on the right bank and includes the eastern Île de la Cité and the Île Saint-Louis. It had 27,332 inhabitants in 2023, a density of 17,083 per square kilometre, against 28,370 in 2017. Its districts are Saint-Merri, Saint-Gervais, the Arsenal and Notre-Dame, and its town hall is at 2 place Baudoyer. Lines 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11 and 14 serve it, with the RER station of Châtelet–Les Halles.
The 3rd is the smaller of the two in area but the more densely populated.
What our hotel base shows
We compared the 70 hotels of our base by the postcode of their address. The 3rd holds 32 and the 4th 38. In the 3rd, 13 are classified four stars and 4 five stars, 9 are three stars, 4 two stars and 1 one star, and 1 has no classification in our data. In the 4th, 20 are three stars, 9 four stars, 4 five stars, 2 two stars and 1 one star, and 2 have no classification. Ratings are the Atout France classifications, with their dates, shown on each hotel page.
The room counts show a similar gap: the 3rd’s hotels average 34 rooms and the 4th’s 29, though the largest, with 162 rooms, is in the 4th. Both arrondissements hold about 1,090 rooms in our base. So the 3rd leans towards four stars and the 4th towards three; the sub-district matters more than the postcode, as the table above shows.
Telling the 3rd from the 4th on the street
The postcode is the quick test: 75003 for the 3rd, 75004 for the 4th. On a map, the rue des Francs-Bourgeois gives the line between them, and the place des Vosges sits on it. For a visitor, the practical difference is the metro: lines 3 and 9 reach the 3rd, lines 7 and 14 the 4th, and the rest are shared.
Hotels by sub-district
The same count by sub-district, taken from the hotel files, gives a finer picture than the arrondissement. Stars are Atout France classifications; “none” means no classification in our data; room counts are averages of the hotels that give them.
| Sub-district | Arrondissement | Hotels | Stars (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / none) | Average rooms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arts-et-Métiers | 3rd | 18 | 1 / 3 / 6 / 5 / 2 / 1 | 37 |
| Saint-Paul | 4th | 16 | 1 / 2 / 9 / 3 / 1 / 0 | 33 |
| Hôtel de Ville | 4th | 11 | 0 / 0 / 7 / 2 / 1 / 1 | 30 |
| Haut-Marais | 3rd | 10 | 0 / 1 / 2 / 6 / 1 / 0 | 27 |
| Rue des Rosiers | 4th | 4 | 0 / 0 / 1 / 2 / 1 / 0 | 19 |
| Place des Vosges | 3rd and 4th | 4 | 0 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 2 / 1 | 31 |
| Islands | 4th (and 1st) | 4 | 0 / 0 / 2 / 2 / 0 / 0 | 22 |
| Archives | 3rd | 3 | 0 / 0 / 1 / 2 / 0 / 0 | 31 |
Two readings follow from the table. The Haut-Marais is the sub-district where four stars dominate, with six of its ten hotels, and the Hôtel de Ville sector is the one where three stars dominate, with seven of eleven. Both counts are for our base, not for every hotel of the district. Each sub-district is described on our map of Le Marais.
Does it matter for a hotel?
Less than the postcode suggests, but three points are worth knowing.
- Shop opening on Sunday. The zone touristique internationale “Le Marais”, created by an order of 25 September 2015, covers the Marais east of rue des Archives, in both arrondissements. Arts-et-Métiers, in the 3rd, lies outside it, so Sunday shopping is not guaranteed there.
- Metro. Lines 1, 4, 5, 8 and 11 appear on both sides in our area data. Lines 3 and 9 appear only for the 3rd, lines 7 and 14 only for the 4th. Line 8 does not stop at République from 22 July 2026 to April 2027 because of works.
- Choice. The 3rd holds the area of Arts-et-Métiers, with 18 hotels, and the Haut-Marais, with 10; the 4th holds Saint-Paul, with 16, and the Hôtel de Ville sector, with 11.
To pick one arrondissement, see hotels in the 3rd arrondissement and hotels in the 4th arrondissement; to see how the districts lie on a map, the map of Le Marais; and for the whole neighbourhood, the guide to Le Marais. Hotels from both sides are compared on the home page.