Nour Mosque

Nour Mosque, also known as Nour Bercy Mosque, sits at a discreet address at 11 Rue Corbineau, in the 12th arrondissement of Paris. It is not a purpose-built mosque but a prayer room fitted out on the ground floor of a residential building, in a quiet neighbourhood close to Parc de Bercy and Gare de Lyon. Its presence matters for a population that would otherwise have to cross the Seine or walk up to the 11th to find a place of worship.

Getting there

Rue Corbineau is a three-minute walk from Dugommier station (line 6). Bercy, at the crossing of lines 6 and 14, is five minutes away. Cour Saint-Émilion (line 14) and Daumesnil (lines 6 and 8) also serve the neighbourhood. From Gare de Lyon, count about ten minutes on foot. Bus 24 runs up Quai de la Rapée, and 87 crosses the 12th. Several Vélib' stations surround Parc de Bercy for visitors on a bike.

The Bercy district

The southern 12th was heavily reshaped in the 1990s and 2000s. The former wine warehouses of Bercy gave way to the park of the same name, to Bercy Village with its restaurants and cinemas, and to a new residential fabric that has drawn young families. Rue Corbineau, older, keeps a more modest scale, with Haussmann-era buildings and ground floors filled by neighbourhood shops. It is in this quiet setting that the prayer room has taken root.

A neighbourhood prayer room

Nour Mosque does not have the scale of the large institutional mosques. It is a local place of prayer, used by the worshippers who live or work in the southern 12th, around Bercy and Dugommier. The room is modest, the atmosphere familiar. Friday sermons and Ramadan night prayers bring together a community sized to the district, smaller than the crowds of the great mosques of north-eastern Paris but just as active.

Practical advice for a visit

The prayer room opens around the five daily prayers. Friday noon remains the busiest slot. For a first visit outside prayer times, it is worth calling or sending an email to confirm the room will be open.

The usual rules apply: shoes off before entering, clothes covering shoulders and legs, hair covered for women, quiet inside. Sightseeing makes little sense here: this is a place of worship used by locals, not a monument to walk through.

Around the mosque

Parc de Bercy, five minutes on foot, offers twenty hectares of gardens, old vineyards, a rose garden, a plant pavilion and play areas for children. Bercy Village, in the restored wine cellars, lines up restaurants, cinemas and shops. Pont de Bercy crosses the Seine towards the 13th and its Bibliothèque nationale. Towards the north, Rue de Charenton leads to Place de la Nation and to the Palais de la Porte Dorée, remarkable for its 1930s architecture and its tropical aquarium.

Other mosques in Paris

The 12th is not the most densely equipped arrondissement for mosques, which makes Nour Mosque all the more useful to its worshippers. Elsewhere in Paris, the Grand Mosque of Paris, in the neighbouring 5th, remains the most visible. Omar bn El Khattab Mosque in the 11th and Adda'Wa Mosque in the 19th serve the north-eastern part of the city. Other entries will enrich this directory over time.