Paris postcodes
Addresses in Paris fall into one of twenty postcodes - one for each of the city’s twenty districts. All Paris postcodes (or zip codes, for our American audience) are made of 5 digits. The first three are always “750″, and the final two digits indicate in which of the twenty arrondissements the location can be found.
It’s fairly simple, really: a zipcode “75001″ would suggest a building in the heart of Paris, in the 1st arrondissement, while a code “75020″ would refer to a building in the eastern outskirts of the city, in the 20th arrondissement. Using this rule you can find the rough location of any Paris address just by looking at its postcode - or indeed work out the zip code if you know in which arrondissement the address can be found.
The only exception to this very simple rule comes with addresses marked ‘CEDEX’. The word cedex in a french address means that the location has it’s own individual postcode - most likely it’s a busy office, school or public building that receives lare quantities of mail - and thus requires it’s own code at the sorting office (the equivalent of the British ‘PO Box’ system). While foreigners unfamiliar with the French postal system might easily mistake it for a town in itself, CEDEX is in fact an abbreviation of the phrase “courrier d’entreprise à distribution exceptionnelle,” which in English translates as the rather less mysterious “Bulk mail system system for businesses users”.
While the postcodes of ‘cedex’ addresses might not follow the simple rules described above, all Paris postcodes, of every type, begin with the two digits ‘75′. Check out our Paris arrondissements guide if you’d like to know more about the city’s twenty districts - or click the city map in the sidebar.
