Paris and Champagne Tour Overview
Paris in the Second World War is one of those subjects that can seem familiar until you begin to look closely. You know the broad outlines of occupation, resistance and complicity, and liberation. This tour offers something rarer: a way into that history through art, literature, and the lived environment of the city itself. Inspired by Bryn Turnbull’s The Paris Deception, it follows the routes of stolen art, the people who tried to save it, and the neighbourhoods where acts of courage, compromise, fear, and defiance played out day by day.
Then the story widens. A short train ride brings you to Champagne, where a region known around the world for celebration reveals another identity: a place shaped by resistance and surrender. In Reims, Épernay, and the surrounding countryside, our sommelier guide will take you through the millennia-old story of how this land came to bear such rich fruit. And with Bryn, you’ll consider the wartime history that gives this beautiful region unexpected depth.
Connect your on-the-ground experience to a contemporary work of historical fiction
This itinerary doesn’t simply take inspiration from The Paris Deception; it is built to deepen your experience of it. Bryn travels with the group, and the tour includes literary discussions along the way. The novel becomes a lens through which Paris and Champagne come into focus. Reading, discussion, and travel enrich one another.
Follow a Paris itinerary most visitors would never discover on their own
A private presentation at Atelier du Temps Passé introduces the restoration and even forgery techniques that echo the novel’s daring art-rescue plot. Walks through the Place Vendôme, Place de la Concorde, and the area around the Jeu de Paume reveal how wartime history is embedded in the city’s streets, museums, hotels, and monuments—and selectively excluded from them. You come away with a more textured understanding not just of what happened here, but how.
Travel with guides who are storytellers as well as experts
Your guides are deeply knowledgeable interpreters of Paris and its past. They evoke the atmosphere of occupied Paris and the moral complexity of life under Nazi rule. Their approach helps you grasp the danger people faced, the choices they made, and the hopes they held onto. As you walk the streets of Paris, weave together military and social history, art, and psychology into a fuller and more nuanced understanding of France in WWII than a conventional history tour can offer.
Discover a side of Champagne that goes far beyond the glass
Most travellers come to Champagne expecting tastings and beauty. You’ll get those, but you’ll also discover a region with a remarkable wartime story. Based in Reims, you’ll explore the cathedral city and its role in the final chapter of the war. You’ll visit Épernay and the famous Avenue de Champagne, and head into the countryside to Hautvillers and the interactive Pressoria. It’s a more complete experience of the region: its history, landscape, architecture, and culture, as well as its wines.
Travel at a human pace, with time to think
This tour is thoughtfully paced, with multiple nights in Paris and Reims, only one intercity transfer, and free time built in. That means you are not packing and unpacking constantly or being rushed from one site to the next. Instead, you have time to reflect, explore on your own, and let the themes of the trip connect. The benefit is simple but important: you remember more, feel more, and enjoy more.
Get the benefits of our small groups, always
You may have seen tours of 35 or 40 people advertised as “small group.” Or even been on one of these big-bus experiences. Our tours are truly small, with a cap of 17. This means lots of face time with your guides, stays at family-run hotels that are off-limits to big groups, and the freedom to enjoy the company of new friends or take time for yourself.
Paris and Champagne Itinerary at a Glance
Day 1: Arrive to Paris
Day 2: Atelier du Temps Passé art presentation / Mémorial de la Shoah visit
Day 3: Musée de la Libération / cooking class
Day 4: Place Vendôme, Concorde, & Jeu de Paume walk
Day 5: Discussion / Left Bank guided walk
Day 6: Train to Reims / cathedral tour
Day 7: Pressoria Champagne museum / day out in the countryside
Day 8: Discussion / Reims heritage and history tour
Day 9: Champagne houses, including Pommery
Day 10: Departure
Accommodation
Hôtel Le Littré, Paris
Hôtel Continental, Reims
Readings
- The Paris Deception by Bryn Turnbull
- Suite française by Irène Némirovsky
Bryn’s page-turning novel The Paris Deception evokes the atmosphere of WWII Paris through the stories of two women, an artist and an art conservator, determined not to be crushed by the Nazi occupation or the personal grief the war has inflicted on them.
