Paris

No one could imagine Paris today without its signature spire. But Gustave Eiffel only constructed this graceful tower – then the world’s tallest, at 320m – as a temporary exhibit for the 1889 Exposition Universelle. Luckily, its popularity (and radiotelegraphy antennas) assured its survival beyond the World Fair and its elegant art nouveau webbed-metal design has become the defining fixture of the city’s skyline. Head here at dusk for the best day and night views of the glittering city, and toast making it to the top at the sparkling Champagne bar.

If anything rivals the Eiffel Tower as the symbol of Paris, it’s this magnificent 1836-built monument to Napoléon’s 1805 victory at Austerlitz – Napoléon commissioned the monument the following year. The intricately sculpted triumphal arch stands sentinel in the centre of the Étoile (star) roundabout; use the pedestrian tunnels below ground to reach it safely. Some of the best vistas in Paris radiate from the top, including swooping views along the luxury-shop-lined Champs-Élysées, Paris’ most glamorous avenue, now car free on the first Sunday of every month.

The Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo are just two of the priceless treasures housed inside the fortress turned royal palace turned France’s first national museum, the Musée du Louvre. Stretching along the Seine, this immense museum can seem overwhelming, but there are plenty of ways to experience it even if you don’t have the nine months it would take to glance at every artwork and artefact here. One of the best is via its thematic trails, from the ‘Art of Eating’ to ‘Love in the Louvre’.

The lovely Musée Rodin is the most romantic of Paris’ museums. Auguste Rodin’s former workshop and showroom, the 1730-built, beautifully restored Hôtel Biron, is filled with Rodin’s own sculptural masterpieces like The Kiss, the marble monument to love, as well as creations by his protégée, sculptor Camille Claudel, and by other artists whose works Rodin collected, Monet, Van Gogh and Renoir among them. Its pièce de résistance is the mansion’s rambling, rose-scented sculpture garden, which provides an entrancing setting for contemplating works like The Thinker.

Whether you’re at an unchanged-in-decades neighbourhood haunt, a beautiful art nouveau brasserie, a switched-on, experimental neobistro or a feted haute cuisine establishment helmed by a legendary chef – such as Restaurant Guy Savoy, ensconced in the neoclassical former mint, the Monnaie de Paris – the food and the dining experience are considered inseparable. France pioneered what is still the most influential style of cooking in the Western world and Paris is its showcase par excellence. Do as Parisians do and savour every moment.

Despite the fire that felled its spire and gutted its roof and interior in April 2019, the Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris is still the city’s geographic and spiritual heart. Located on the larger of the two inner-city islands, this Gothic wonder – a vision of flying buttresses and frightening gargoyles – took nearly 200 years to build. Thankfully the post-fire reconstruction will be measured in years instead of centuries. The recent inferno was not the cathedral's first brush with death – it was almost demolished following damage during the French Revolution.

Paris, like any major city, offers international chains (including icons that originated here). But what really sets Parisian shopping apart is its incredible array of specialist shops. Candles from the world’s oldest candle maker, paints developed with celebrated artists at venerable art-supply shops and edgy fashion designed in the hip Haut Marais are just some of the treats in store. Other unique shopping experiences include bouquiniste (secondhand bookshop) stalls lining the banks of the Seine, and grande-dame department stores such as Galeries Lafayette, topped by a century-old stained-glass dome.

Richly coloured walls at the Musée d’Orsay make its impressionist and postimpressionist canvases by masters including Renoir, Gauguin, Cézanne, Sisley, Manet, Monet, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec appear as if they’re hung in an intimate home. Completed at the turn of the 20th century, the Gare d'Orsay – the grand former railway station in which the museum is located – is an exemplar of art nouveau architecture, but the star of the show is France’s treasured national collection of masterpieces from 1848 to 1914.

The city's most popular park, Jardin du Luxembourg offers a snapshot of Parisian life. Couples stroll through the chestnut groves. Children chase wooden sailing boats around the octagonal pond and laugh at the antics of engaging marionettes. Old men play rapid-fire chess with cherished pieces at weathered tables. Students pore over books between lectures. Office workers snatch some sunshine, lounging in iconic sage-green metal chairs. Musicians strike up in the bandstand. Joggers loop past stately statues. And friends meet and make plans to meet again.

Paris' most beautiful 'boulevard' of all, the Seine, flows through the city's heart, flanked by Parisian-as-it-gets landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Notre Dame. Taking to the water on a cruise or Batobus ferry is an idyllic way to acquaint or reacquaint yourself with the city. The river's Unesco World Heritage–listed riverbanks, islands and 37 bridges are perfect for promenading, particularly along the reclaimed car-free stretches on both the left and right banks. Entertainment options abound, including floating bars and summertime beaches.

A Paris landmark, Basilique du Sacré-Cœur is a place of pilgrimage in more ways than one. Staircased, ivy-clad streets slink up the hill of the fabled artists’ neighbourhood of Montmartre to a funicular gliding up to the church's dove-white domes. The chapel-lined basilica – featuring the shimmering apse mosaic Christ in Majesty – crowns the 130m-high Butte de Montmartre (Montmartre Hill). Its lofty position provides dizzying vistas across Paris from the basilica’s front steps and, above all, from up inside its main dome.

The primary-coloured, inside-out Centre Pompidou building houses France’s national modern- and contemporary-art museum (Europe's largest), the Musée National d’Art Moderne (MNAM), containing creations from 1905 through to the present day. On display are works from Europeans (Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Kandinsky and more) and cross-Atlantic artists such as Kahlo, Warhol and Pollock, plus edgy installation pieces, sculpture and videos. The centre’s cutting-edge cultural offerings include temporary exhibition spaces, a public library, cinemas and entertainment venues. Topping it off is the spectacular panorama from the roof.

Stall after stall of cheeses, punnets of raspberries, stacked baguettes, sun-ripened tomatoes, freshly lopped pigs’ trotters, horse-meat sausages, spit-roasted chickens, glass bottles of olives and olive oils, quail eggs, duck eggs, boxes of chanterelle mushrooms and knobbly truffles, long-clawed langoustines and prickly sea urchins on beds of crushed ice – along with belts, boots, wallets, cheap socks, chic hats, colourful scarves, striped T-shirts, wicker baskets, wind-up toys, buckets of flowers… Paris’ street markets, such as the wonderful Marché Bastille, are a feast for the senses.

Paris is a collection of villages and this sprawl of cobbled lanes and elaborate tombs, with a population (as it were) of more than one million, qualifies as one in its own right. The world’s most visited cemetery was founded in 1804, and initially attracted few funerals because of its distance from the city centre. The authorities responded by exhuming the remains of the famous and resettling them here. Their marketing ploy worked and Cimetière du Père Lachaise has been Paris’ most fashionable final address ever since.

No wonder revolutionaries massacred the Château de Versailles palace guard and ultimately dragged King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, back to Paris to be guillotined: this monumental 700-room palace and sprawling estate – with its fountained gardens, ponds and canals – could not have been in starker contrast to the average taxpayer's living conditions at the time. A Unesco World Heritage–listed wonder, Versailles is easily reached from central Paris; try to time your visit to catch musical fountain displays and equestrian shows.

Bordered by shaded towpaths and traversed by iron footbridges, the charming, 4.5km-long Canal St-Martin was slated to be concreted over when barge transportation declined, until local residents rallied to save it. The quaint setting lured artists, designers and students, who set up artists collectives, vintage and offbeat boutiques, and a bevy of neoretro cafes and bars. Enduring maritime legacies include old swing bridges that still pivot 90 degrees when boats pass through the canal’s double locks. A cruise is the best way to experience Paris’ lesser-known waterway.