Les Passages Couverts de Paris 1

The Passage des Panoramas wears a glass roof that traps a warm, amber glow against the gray Paris sky. This is the first of the city's covered walkways, built in seventeen ninety-nine to shield wealthy shoppers from the city's muddy, chaotic streets. Before the invention of modern department stores, this narrow corridor offered a private, rain-free world for commerce. The original panorama paintings that gave the passage its name are long gone, but the storefronts still hold their nineteenth-century wooden frames.