It opened in 1843, and its trick is the slope: the ground drops so steeply between the two streets it connects that the arcade had to be built as three storeys stacked down the hill, linked by a monumental wooden staircase under a glass roof.
The galleries are lined with statues — allegorical figures of commerce, industry and the seasons — looking down over the balustrades at the shoppers. It is one of the most complete nineteenth-century arcades left in France and it is still an ordinary working shopping street.
It has appeared in a good deal of French cinema, most famously in Jacques Demy's Nantes films.
Enter from the lower end on Rue de la Fosse and climb. Coming down the stairs is fine; coming up them is the view the building was designed around.
Passage Pommeraye in pictures
