Mosquée de Paris
The entrance is on a quiet square renamed in 2015 for an imam who sheltered people during the Occupation. Step through and the city shifts: a marble courtyard tiled in zellige mosaic, stucco screens filtering the light, a 33-metre minaret modelled on the one at Al-Zaytuna in Tunis.
The mosque opened in 1926, and the tea room has been pouring mint tea in long arcing streams ever since — into small glasses, alongside honey-soaked pastries, under painted woodwork. The prayer rooms are not open to visitors, but the courtyard, gardens, library, and hammam are reason enough to come.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to time it for a weekday morning in late April, when the wisteria is at its peak and the photographers haven't yet arrived. The tea room fills fast after noon; arrive early and you'll get a table under the trees. The hammam (women only, closed Tuesdays) books up — worth checking ahead.
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Book directly at the providerHow Mosquée de Paris came to be
The mosque was conceived as a gesture of recognition: France had lost tens of thousands of Muslim soldiers in World War I, and in 1920 the government approved plans for a mosque in Paris to mark that debt. The first stones were laid in 1922; the building was inaugurated in 1926 with President Gaston Doumergue and Sultan Yusef of Morocco in attendance. The first communal prayer was led by Ahmad al-Alawi, an Algerian Sufi master. The driving force behind it all was Si Kaddour Benghabrit, who became the mosque's first rector and directed it until his death in 1954 — his tomb is in the eastern gallery, near memorial plaques for Muslim soldiers of both World Wars.
The design, by Maurice Tranchant de Lunel with construction overseen by Robert Fournez, Maurice Montout, and Charles Heubès, drew directly from Moroccan and Tunisian models: the great courtyard echoes the mosque of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, and the minbar was a gift from King Fuad I of Egypt in 1929. A major renovation in 1992 brought the complex back to its original detail.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
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When to go
Late April to mid-May is wisteria season in the gardens — striking, and busy with photographers. Spring and early summer mornings are the most comfortable time to linger in the courtyard.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.