Walking the Portes: Winters in Paris 2014-2019

The portes are the old city gates of Paris (39 access points encircling the city), but you won't find the walks in any tourist guidebook. Simon & Erica used this historic topography as a template for setting their walk agenda - each walk would start with a Métro ride to a porte from where they would make their way across the city back to the apartment, each walk forming a spoke on a wheel-like map. 

And of course, they walked the city in the steps of a particular ancestry, the Walter Benjamin of the Arcades, the Guy Debord dérive or drift, and the ambiguity of place past and present that Georges Perec encounters in his Lieux. Thus Walking the Portes offers a delightfully personal view of Paris, each walk bringing it's own particularities, placing our walkers into an array of contexts where they find themselves ruminating upon everything from manifestations of late capitalism to the minutiae of daily existence.

Learn more about Walking the Portes, including insights from the authors, in our blog article, Walking the Portes of Paris.

Wonderful, personal, inspirational. Where can I buy that cheese????!!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
John Goodger, Books About Art customer

Walking the Portes... renders these artists’ lived experiences of Paris and their deliberate way of being in the world together. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Robert Bolick, Curator - Books On Books Collection

This elegant two-hander will delight any reader with more than a passing enthusiasm for the City of Light. In the pages of this erudite, often funny journal, seasoned flâneurs Simon Cutts and Erica Van Horn show us that alighting the trottoir and placing one foot after another can lead to remarkable observations, unique memories and original thought. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Jamie Warde-Aldam, Books About Art customer

This book, as with all of Coracle publications, is beautifully produced. It has a tactile sense to it that encourages you to pick it up and hold. Inside the number, variety and originality of stories and day to day events are marvellous. They are alive to the happened event. What would seem unimportant incidents are treated with exquisite detail and fondness. It is a complete view of Paris, in a completely new and magical way. Written by two artists who always bring to their publications wit, originality and style. I would give it all the stars that are available, a must. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
David Willetts, Artist

This is not so much Benjamin, Aragon or Debord but more an affable and personal affirmation of Paris's walkability and the magic of a city whose life and variety belies its cliches. The flânerie of Erica Van Horn and Simon Cutts is unpretentious and blessedly quirky. They have an eye for the weird, the odd and the coincidental as well as the obvious grandeur of the city. The accounts of their time in Paris are occasionally perplexed and sometimes grumpy, but always warm and humane. This is a book that made me want to return to the Paris I had lived and wandered in. Thoroughly recommended. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Kevin Murphy, Architect and writer

This pleasingly crafted volume brings together numerous short reports from a spell spent exploring the "mythic périphérique of the city [of Paris] by foot, These walks may have something in common with the psychogeographical explorations of lain Sinclair, say, but their laudable aim was to be less creepy and pretentiously suburban. Michael Caines, Times Literary Supplement