Ulysses climbs seven flights of stairs just to get home, and he does it willingly. His apartment in the 10th arrondissement of Paris measures eight square meters, barely enough room to take three steps in any direction, yet from his balcony he can see the Eiffel Tower, Tour Montparnasse, and the white dome of Sacré-Cœur rising above a city of rooftops. More than 50,000 people in Paris are living in spaces like his, many of them in rooms originally built in the 1800s as servants’ quarters for the wealthy tenants on the floors below. Today, those same rooms, called chambres de bonne, are home to students and young professionals who have made a specific calculation: sacrifice square footage, gain the city.
What you give up to live seven floors above Paris
Ulysses moved in about a month before the visit, trading a bigger place outside the city for a room where his shower sits elevated on a platform so the pipes fit underneath, tucked right next to a kitchen counter he described as genuinely solid for cooking. A curtain separates the two not because anyone else can see in, but because, as he put it, ‘for me, it’s like, oh, I got two different rooms, you know?’ He pays around 600 euros a month, closer to 450 or 500 after student government aid. His maximum dinner party capacity is three people, and he has hit that number at least once. He uses a small, slightly wonky teacup to water his plants.
A few arrondissements over, in the 17th district, Ysay’s room doubles as a music studio. She started teaching herself guitar at 12 years old on YouTube, recording covers and posting them online while her family homeschooled her in Siem Reap because the local French school cost too much for three children. Her shelves in Paris hold the essentials she listed without irony: coffee, tea, rice, pasta, and whiskey. The apartment has no hot water, one shared toilet with a door that cannot close all the way, and a balcony where she watches the sunset with a glass of scotch. She has been calling about the hot water for a month with no reply. She performed a short private set on her synthesizer and pads anyway.
Pietro, doing a sustainability internship, lives eight floors up in a building with an elevator he cannot use because it opens onto the other side. His room contains his bed, toilet, shower, and sink in a configuration he described plainly: ‘This is my bed, toilet, shower, and sink.’ A friend recently gave him olive oil from Puglia as a gift. He called it the best gift he had ever received. He once climbed the stairs seven times in two hours for a seven-person party. He does not plan to stay longer than a year, and called it a hundred percent worth it.
The owners, the boat people, and the one with a pull-up bar
Oscar’s 13 square meters in his family-owned apartment feel larger than they are because his father built a custom folding table that expands to a double surface for guests and collapses to half for eating alone, along with a pull-up and dip bar mounted above it. He estimates someone renting the space would pay a minimum of 800 euros a month. He practices handling an airsoft replica of the French Army sidearm at home between his business school courses and his paid French military reserve work.
Cleo, in the south of Paris, has lived in her room for two years and calls it her safe place. After being struck by a car at 21 and spending two weeks in a coma, she manages memory difficulties by keeping every daily-use item exactly in its place and writing everything else into her iPhone notes before she leaves. Her notebooks, medical supplies, and labeled storage boxes are organized with a precision she described as obligatory, not optional. Drew Binsky, watching her explain the system, said he would love to be that organized.
The most unexpected setup belongs to a couple living year-round on a boat moored along the Seine. They pay 400 euros a month because they own the vessel, heat the main room with a fireplace in winter, cool off in a rooftop pool every evening after work, and host guests in a cabin at the far end of the hull. The boat is roughly 100 years old. When the engine turned over in the cramped lower deck, the smell was immediate and intense.
A small room with a blue light and a medical card
In Cleo’s kitchen, a row of boxes sits on a low shelf, each labeled for a specific category: one for cables, one for hair ties, one for things she reaches for less often. The box for red lip products is next to the box for cables.
Ulysses summed up the arithmetic of Paris living from his balcony, two hours of daily commuting traded for eight square meters and a clear sightline to Sacré-Cœur: ‘I downgraded, but I upgraded the location.’ On a warm evening with no air conditioning, that view is exactly what he came for.
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