Paris (CNN) — Secluded under the rooftops of Paris’s renowned Haussmannian buildings — home to some of the city’s wealthiest residents— are also hidden the most affordable apartments available: the notorious chambres de bonnes, or maids’ rooms.
Originally designed over two centuries ago to house the servants working in these exclusively bourgeois residences, they have become a budget-friendly hack for generations of students and young travelers willing to sacrifice space and comfort for a place in the heart of the city.
However, due to the worsening heatwaves hitting the country, these tiny rooms are quickly becoming intolerable to live in, as a result of a combination of heat-absorbing rooftops and poor ventilation.
The architects of two centuries ago never imagined the buildings would have to regularly withstand 40 Celsius, or 100 Fahrenheit, summers. A 2024 study by urban planning agency Paris Atelier of Urbanism (APUR) said top floor residences without proper solar protection can produce indoor temperatures up to 10 degrees Celsius higher than outside.
As these extreme temperatures occur more frequently, this traditional student experience, and last-resort housing option for many, could soon be facing extinction.
Anatoly Novikov, a 23-year-old Russian student at Institut Polytechnique de Paris, may represent one of the last generations to live in these ancient servants’ quarters.
His humble abode measures just nine square meters (about 97 square feet) — about the size of a parking space — and is the minimum legal size for accommodation in France. Although such conditions may be unimaginable for many, according to him, it’s a worthy sacrifice for its coveted location.
“It was kind of a childhood dream come true,” he says. “I was always living in the suburbs; I wanted to experience actually being in the city. I think it’s just a very cool authentic student experience where, yes, the location is amazing, but everything else is terrible.”
His neighbourhood, Notre-dame-des-Champs, is one of the most affluent in the city — the median property price of about 14,000 euros ($16,400) per square meter is a far cry from the 700 euros ($820) he pays per month.
He says friends have expressed shock and concern over his cramped living space, but in his view, suffering is part of the student experience.
“I guess prison cells are bigger,” he says. “Other people wouldn’t make it in here; I can. I’m enjoying my survival. That’s a challenge I accepted.”
Bilal Guénanain, a 24-year-old student from Brittany living in a chambre de bonne close to the Champs Elysées, is happy to sacrifice his standard of living to live out his Parisian dream.
“Living in Paris without seeing the Eiffel Tower to me, would be very sad,” he says. “I love living my ‘Emily in Paris’ era!”
One of the trade-offs for paying just 550 euros ($632) for a studio in one of the most expensive areas of Paris, is the arduous six flights of stairs he has to climb every day: “We don’t see this in ‘Emily in Paris,’” he jokes.
Paris has long attracted young travelers, struggling students and aspiring artists, from the era of the 19th-century Grand Tour, where exploring Europe became a rite of passage, to the Lost Generation of expatriate writers the 1920s.
They, too, often lived in circumstances similar to Novikov and Guénanain. Their time in the city shaped them, just as their experiences shaped the city’s history, with countless works of art and fiction inspired by the trials and tribulations of these young city-dwellers.
The famed French writer Victor Hugo was one of many to live in a tiny rooftop lodging as a young student in 1821, only a couple of streets away from Novikov. His experience in his modest attic room is believed to have influenced his depiction of Marius’s tragic abode in his most famous novel, “Les Misérables.”
Despite these tiny attic rooms having hosted countless travelers, those new to the city often remain unaware of their existence. This was the case for 23-year-old Emilie Reh, a freelance creative from New York who started her own “Grand Tour” of Europe in Paris this summer. She was unprepared for what was waiting for her when she booked her chambre de bonne on Airbnb.
“I wasn’t aware that there was a shared bathroom as well,” she says. “Because the room was so small and it was pretty hot, I didn’t spend any time in it.
Despite the initial shock of discovering the modest layout of her temporary home, and its separate communal toilet, she says the trade-off ultimately proved worthwhile, especially compared to the other hostels she stayed in during her travels around Europe. At 116 euros ($135) a night for a private studio in the popular Marais district during summer, the deal was too good.
Her TikTok review of the experience, titled “World’s smallest Paris Airbnb tour,” racked up thousands of views on her account.
“It’s a room to sleep in and it’s safe,” she says. “Even though you’re given such a small space, it is still such a charm to be in a great location and have the traditional Parisian building.”
Satisfied with her experience, Reh did not realize that these rooms aren’t typically temporary accommodation, but serve as full-time homes for many in the city. Despite being used to less-than-desirable living situations in New York, the news still came as a shock.
“I think it is a good concept for affordable housing, especially with students, but I think that would be a hard situation to live in constantly. Crazy to me that people live there full-time,” she says.
Close to 55,000 people live in chambres de bonne in the Paris region according to INSEE, France’s national statistics bureau. As the era of live-in servants ended, these rooms were then repurposed for the financially disadvantaged. While these studios might be a memorable experience or quirky pub tale for generations of students and young explorers, they also represent an enduring reality for many Parisians.
A 2011 study by APUR reveals that converted service rooms in Paris were occupied not just by students and young professionals, but also the unemployed and retirees, with 20% of occupants being over the age of 60. Now climate change is creating a new threat of extinction, as these rooms pass from uncomfortable to too dangerous to inhabit.
However, Paris has also seen its student population go up by 30% in the last 20 years, many of them international. With student living costs getting even more expensive, and these last affordable accommodation options becoming unsustainable due to the rising heat, this begs the question: Where will they go?
This summer France recorded an unprecedented number of heat-related deaths. The Paris region had the most fatalities and people living on the top floors in uninsulated buildings were particularly affected, the Parisian Climate Agency reports.
Dominique Naert, director of the masters program in energy-efficient renovation of historic buildings at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, speculates that the rooms may in the future become illegal to rent out.
“There are still many students in them, as well as people who have lived there for 25, 30, or 40 years often because they couldn’t move due to financial constraints,” he says. “They stayed put, and many are dealing with physical ailments or health issues that make them even more vulnerable, which brings up the issue of mortality rates.”
Engineers, urban planning experts and policymakers are yet to find a solution. State-appointed industry body Architects of the Buildings of France, in charge of protecting these historic Parisian facades, is working on how to readapt these maid’s rooms while preserving the renowned buildings that have become synonymous with the city.
For Naert, those living under the roofs represent are on the frontline of global warming’s affects, but their problems will soon be faced by their downstairs neighbours if a solution isn’t found.
Not just in Paris but in cities worldwide.
“In any major capital or metropolis, you consistently see this legacy from the 19th and early 20th centuries, whether you go to Bordeaux, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, or New York, you have exactly the same problem,” says Naert.
“In bourgeois apartment buildings, there were always maids or service staff; it was part of the bourgeois system that is true globally. Those living two or three floors down are also already being affected. I think the work we’re doing will serve a purpose and will interest a lot of people.”
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