12th arrondissement (Reuilly)

The 12th arrondissement, officially Reuilly, runs from the Place de la Bastille to the eastern edge of Paris. Including the Bois de Vincennes, which belongs to it, it covers about 16.3 km², one of the two largest arrondissements. It had 138,024 residents in the 2023 legal population (Insee). Its quartiers are Bel-Air, Picpus, Bercy and Quinze-Vingts.

The population is slightly older than the Paris average, with 19% aged 65 or over in the 2023 census.

The district town hall, the Mairie du 12e, is at 130 avenue Daumesnil. It handles civil status, identity documents, crèche requests and school enrolment.

• Quinze-Vingts and Bastille: the Opéra Bastille, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the covered and open-air Aligre market, and the Viaduc des Arts, an old railway viaduct whose arches hold craft workshops, with the Coulée verte René-Dumont planted walkway on top.
• Gare de Lyon and Bercy: Gare de Lyon, for trains to south-east France, Switzerland and Italy. Bercy has the Ministry of the Economy, the Accor Arena concert and sports hall, the Cinémathèque française, the Parc de Bercy and the Cour Saint-Émilion with its former wine warehouses converted into shops and restaurants.
• Picpus and Bel-Air: mainly residential areas around the avenue Daumesnil, Place Félix-Éboué and the Place de la Nation, with mixed buildings from the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Bois de Vincennes: the city's largest green space to the east, with lakes, the Parc floral de Paris and the Parc zoologique de Paris.

• Rail: Gare de Lyon (long-distance trains and Transilien R) and Paris-Bercy.
• RER: RER A at Gare de Lyon and Nation, RER D at Gare de Lyon.
• Métro: line 1 (Bastille, Gare de Lyon, Reuilly–Diderot, Nation) and line 14 (Gare de Lyon, Bercy, Cour Saint-Émilion), both fully automatic. Line 6 serves Bercy, Dugommier, Daumesnil, Bel-Air, Picpus and Nation, and line 8 Ledru-Rollin, Reuilly–Diderot, Montgallet, Daumesnil, Michel Bizot, Porte Dorée and Porte de Charenton. Line 5 stops at Quai de la Rapée, and lines 2 and 9 at Nation.
• Tram: the T3a runs along the boulevards des Maréchaux on the southern and eastern edge, and the T3b starts at Porte de Vincennes.

The housing stock is mixed: 22% of main residences were in buildings completed before 1919 and 49% in buildings from 1946 to 1990 (2023 census). 54% had one or two rooms.

Of the 88,200 dwellings counted, 9% were second homes or occasional-use flats and 8% vacant. Among main residences, 64% were rented, and social housing made up 21%, above the Paris average of 18%. Owner-occupiers accounted for 32%.

Rent control applies to private leases. Check the reference rent with the City of Paris tool and see OLAP's market-rent estimates by quartier for early 2026.

Children under 15 made up 12.7% of residents in 2023 (Paris: 12.8%). The 12th is one of the best-provided arrondissements for green space: the Bois de Vincennes with the Parc floral, the Parc de Bercy and the Jardin Yitzhak-Rabin, the Jardin de Reuilly – Paul-Pernin, the Square Charles-Péguy and the Coulée verte René-Dumont, a planted walkway on a former railway line.

Crèche requests and school enrolment go through the Mairie du 12e. Public schools are allocated by home address.