Getting Around Paris
Cluny La Sorbonne metro station.
Paris is divided into sections called arrondissements, which are numbered 1 to 20 in a circular pattern. Each of these neighbourhoods is worth exploring, but if your time is limited, focus on the must-see sights located near the River Seine, which flows through the heart of the city centre and divides it into the Right Bank (north side) and Left Bank (south side). Îsle de la Cité lies in the middle of the river and contains the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. Famous attractions on the Right Bank include the Louvre, Place de la Concorde, Champs Elysées and Arc de Triomphe. Famous Left Bank attractions include the Eiffel Tower, Latin Quarter, La Sorbonne, Pantheon and Luxembourg Gardens.
Sightseeing boat on the Seine.
A convenient and pleasant way to obtain an overview of the city’s highlights is by taking a one-hour river cruise on a glass-covered tour boat. There are also on-and-off boat tours that depart from numerous quays along the Seine between the Eiffel Tower and the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Red double-decker sightseeing buses also offer on-and-off tours. The Paris Metro is an efficient way to quickly get from point to point.
Walking is the best way to truly experience the charm and variety of the Parisian neighbourhoods, where you can pause for refreshment at a sidewalk café or relax on a park bench with a picnic lunch. On Sundays, designated roads – including those along both sides of the Seine – are car free. Sturdy touring bicycles can be rented from public bicycle racks using a credit card.
NOTE: Mornings are the best time to visit the interior of the Eiffel Tower (when the elevator lineups are their shortest) and Notre Dame Cathedral, when the morning sunlight floods through the stained-glass windows. Expect long lineups at the Louvre, especially to view the Mona Lisa. The Paris Museum Pass provides fast-track entry to these major attractions. Museums in Paris generally close one day a week (usually Monday or Tuesday).
The new Shakespeare & Company bookstore on Rue de la Bucherie.
Paris is famous for its designer stores and boutiques, and the most glamorous of these are found along the Champs-Élysées and Rue de Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the latter being the epicentre of Parisian fashion with stores showcasing major international designers such as Dior, Valentino and Chanel. Place Vendome is the location of flagship stores of Cartier, Chanel and Piaget. The arcaded Rue de Rivoli, which runs alongside the Louvre, is another fashionable shopping street.
Several department stores are located on Haussman, including the opulent, glass-domed Galeries Lafayette – a collection of designer shops with a food court on the bottom level and a rooftop café. The Bon Marché is another well-known department store, located on the Left Bank on Rue de Sèvres, about a half mile west of St. Sulpice Church.
Outdoor markets are located throughout Paris, each neighbourhood containing a warren of pedestrian streets that wind their way through open-air markets selling everything from fresh fruits and vegetables to bargain-priced clothing and antiques. The Marché aus Fleurs (flower market) on Île de la Cité is one of the oldest markets in Paris.
Note: Some shops are closed on Sundays.
The Latin Quarter is famous for its sidewalk cafés and food stands.
Dining in France is pure pleasure. Whether a simple continental breakfast or a five-course dinner accompanied by fine wines, the meal will be expertly prepared and presented. Restaurants usually offer a plat du jour (menu of the day) featuring two or three courses at a set price, which is less expensive than ordering a la carte. Most restaurants include a 15% service charge in their prices. Cafés, bistros and brasseries traditionally serve beverages accompanied by light fare. Typical opening times for lunch are noon to 2:30 pm and dinner is generally served from 7:30 pm to 11:00 pm. Many restaurants are closed on Sundays and some shut down for the month of August.
The cafés at Saint-Germain des Pres attracted famous writers of the 1920s, including Ernest Hemingway.
Hemingway called Paris a moveable feast. The city’s famous café culture held a special appeal for writers in the 1920s when the Lost Generation of expatriates descended on Paris. The city’s cafés are where Parisians meet friends, people watch or sit and read undisturbed. A young Hemingway spent hours in various Left Bank cafés working at his craft, including La Coupole on Boulevard du Montparnasse and Café Les Deux Magots on Rue St-Benoit, one of three famous cafés at Saint-Germain des Prés. The art deco Café de Flore is next door and around the corner on Boulevard Saint-Germain is Brasserie Lipp, where generous portions of Alsatian cuisine are served. These three cafés with their outdoor terraces have long been a focal point for intellectuals and artists, attracting such luminaries as Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jean-Paul Sartre. Another iconic café in the Saint-Germain area is La Palette on Rue de Seine. The shop windows and food displays along nearby Rue Bonaparte are a feast for the eyes.
A walk along the Seine reveals beautiful views of Paris. Above, Grand Palais and Pont Alexandre.
There is a huge and diverse selection of restaurants and sidewalk cafés throughout Paris, and most of the city’s major attractions, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Centre Pompideau and Musée D’Orsay, offer onsite dining. The domed rooftop café at Galeries Lafayette offers great views over Paris, and the terrace at Le Rostand (6 Place Edmond Rostand) faces Jardin du Luxembourg. Some of the city’s best restaurants are found in or near the train stations. Le Train Bleu in Gare Lyon serves lunch and dinner in an opulent Belle Epoque setting.
For a more modest dining experience, sample one of many bistros serving French home-style cooking. Rue Mouffetard, in the Latin Quarter, is a cobblestone street lined with tiny bars, bistros and food markets where Julia Child shopped for ingredients in her gourmet feasts.
The Eiffel Tower is Paris’s most famous landmark.
1. Eiffel Tower – This tower was designed by the architectural engineer Gustave Eiffel (who also designed the internal structure of the Statue of Liberty) and was erected at the entrance to the Paris World’s Fair of 1889. Its bold revolutionary design symbolized the triumph of science and engineering, but it so dominated the Paris skyline (as it does to this day) that it provoked a storm of protest among leading intellectuals. However, the public soon accepted this monument to modern technology because, for a small sum, anyone could ride the elevators to the top of the tower for sweeping views of Paris that were previously seen only by the privileged few able to afford a hot-air balloon ride. Thus, the Eiffel Tower, which served no practical purpose, was quickly adopted as an iconic symbol of Paris.
View from the Eiffel Tower looking east over Parc du Champ de Mars.
One of the world’s most popular tourist attractions, the Eiffel Tower is more than 300 metres high, constructed of iron and illuminated at night by projected light beams and 20,000 sparkling light bulbs that have been installed by mountain climbers. The tower has received more than 200 million visitors (it took 94 years to reach the 100-million-visitors mark, but just 19 more years to double that). The tower’s first and second floors are reached by lifts or by stairs (704 steps to the second floor). From the second floor, another set of lifts take visitors to the top for panoramic views of Paris. For more information, visit www.tour-eiffel.fr/en.html.
Stretching southeastward from the Eiffel Tower is Parc du Champs de Mars – a large, public green space originally used for military drills.
2. Palais de Tokyo – Also near the Eiffel Tower, directly upstream, is a footbridge called Passerelle Debilly, which leads across the river to the Palais de Tokyo on the Right Bank. Built for the 1900 World’s Fair, this bridge became a secret meeting spot for East German spies during the Cold War. The Palais de Tokyo is a contemporary art museum.
Maps of Paris
Directly east of Palais de Tokyo is Place de L’Alma where several main avenues converge. The tunnel that runs beneath Place de L’Alma is where Princess Diana was killed in August 1997 when her speeding limousine, pursued by paparazzi, crashed into a pillar.
Arc de Triomphe.
3. Arc de Triomphe – Avenue Marceau leads north to the Place de L’Étoile, formed by the intersection of 12 radiating avenues at the centre of which stands the massive Arc de Triomphe. Commemorating the victories of Napoleon, the arch took 30 years to complete (1806-1836) and it stands 164 feet (50 m) high – a climb of 40 stairs to the top. To reach the arch’s entrance, do not cross the traffic circle but take the pedestrian tunnel on the Avenue de le Grande Armee side of the circle. The principal sculptural group flanking the arch is La Marseillaise by Francois Rude. The body of an unknown French soldier was interred beneath the arch in 1920 and a perpetual flame was lighted.
Pont Alexandre III
France’s most celebrated avenue, the tree-lined Champs Elysées leads directly from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde.
4. Élysée Palace – Exclusive shops line its length, and numerous side streets lead off this spacious avenue, including Avenue de Marigny, which runs past the opulent Élysée Palace (official residence of the French President) to Rue Du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. This exclusive shopping street, although narrow and nondescript compared to Champs Elysées, is one of the world’s most luxurious, with nearly every major global fashion house located here, as well as the Paris offices of Vogue magazine and the American, British and Canadian embassies. Leading in the opposite direction off Champs Élysées is Avenue Winston Churchill, which runs between the Grand Palais (a glass-roofed exhibition hall) and the Petit Palais (the city’s Fine Arts Museum) before connecting with Pont Alexandre III – an arch bridge ornately decorated with Art Nouveau lamps and sculptures. It was named for the Russian czar who concluded the Franco-Russia alliance of 1892.
Champs Elysées viewed from Place de la Concorde.
5. Paris Needle – Place de la Concorde marks the eastern end of the Champs Élysées and contains the Paris Needle – an ancient obelisk from the temple of Luxor which was presented to France by the Egyptian government in 1826. This red-granite column, flanked by fountains, stands near the spot where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were guillotined in 1793.
Tuileries Gardens.
6. Jardin des Tuileries (Tuileries Garden) – This lovely gardenStretches eastward from Place de la Concorde to the Louvre. Tuileries Palace once stood at its eastern end, which is where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were held under house arrest in Tuileries Palace, which was burned by insurrectionists in 1871, its ruins later demolished.
7. Musée d’Orsay – A pedestrian footbridge (Passerelle Solferino) links Tuileries Garden with the Left Bank’s Musée d’Orsay. This fine art museum is housed in a former railway station and contains the world’s largest collection of Impressionist masterpieces, with works by Monet, Renoir, Gauguin and Van Gogh.
The Louvre.
8. The Louvre – one of the world’s largest and most important art museums, its series of galleries stretching for almost a mile. It began as a medieval fortress and served as a royal palace before the French court moved to Versailles. Over time, new buildings were added to the sprawling site, the most recent additions being the glass pyramid erected in the 1980s at the museum entrance and, in 1993, the Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall, which leads to the main reception area under the pyramid. Famous works of art housed in the Louvre include the Mona Lisa, the Nike and the Venus of Milo, as well as a vast collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities. The Louvre is open 9:00 am to 6:00 pm every day, except Tuesday when it remains closed.
‘Mona Lisa’ at the Louvre.
Pont des Arts is a pedestrian bridge linking the Louvre to the Institute of France on the Left Bank. With its delicate ironwork arches and beautiful views of the Seine, this celebrated bridge was rebuilt after being rammed by a barge in 1979.
9. Centre Pompidou – Rue de Rivoli runs eastward from the Louvre to Hotel de Ville (8) (City Hall) which was rebuilt in the 1870s after the Paris Commune set fire to this 16th-century French Renaissance building. A few blocks north of Rue de Rivoli is the Centre Pompidou (designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers) which opened in 1977 to house the National Museum of Modern Art.
Place des Vosges.
10. Place des Vosges – Continuing east on Rue de Rivoli, you will eventually arrive at Place des Vosges – the oldest planned square in Paris. This elegant quadrangle of symmetrical two-storey townhouses was built in the early 1600s as Place Royale and, although royalty did not live here, the French aristocracy did. Famous former residents include Cardinal Richelieu and Victor Hugo, whose home is now a museum. A central fountain and lawns occupy the spacious courtyard where duels were once fought, and the arcaded townhouses now contain restaurants and shops.
11. Place Vendôme – Another Right Bank attraction, where the Hotel Ritz opened its doors in 1898 after César Ritz converted a private residence into a luxury hotel. Coco Chanel lived at the Ritz off and on for thirty years, including during the Nazi occupation of Paris, and she died there in her private suite in 1971 at the age of 87. The bar off the hotel’s lobby was a favourite haunt of Ernest Hemingway.
Opera House.
12. The Opéra House – Designed by Charles Garnier in the Beaux-Arts style, this famous building stands at the convergence of several main avenues north of Place Vendôme. Completed in 1867, the Opéra typified the new, modernized Paris with its opulent façade of arches, columns and a profusion of sculpture and ornamentation brilliantly combined for theatrical effect.
13. Olympia – Nearby on Boulevard des Capucines is the Olympia, the oldest music hall in Paris and the venue at which Edith Piaf achieved great fame in the 1950s, followed by Jacques Brel in the 1960s.
14. Sacré Coeur Basilica – The bohemian Montmartre district stretches up the hillside to Sacré Coeur Basilica, where the view overlooking the city from its steps is spectacular. Montmartre was once an enclave of famous artists, including Renoir, Toulouse-Latrec, Picasso and Van Gogh, and the Montmartre Cemetery, which occupies an old quarry, contains the graves of some of the world’s finest creative talents, including Nijinsky, Berlioz, Degas and Truffaut.
Moulin Rouge.
15. Moulin Rouge – The famous cabaret Moulin Rouge (Red Windmill) is nearby on Boulevard De Clichy.
Notre-Dame’s exterior.
16. Notre-Dame de Paris – Pont Neuf, the city’s oldest bridge, connects the Right Bank to Îsle de la Cité – home to Notre-Dame de Paris (Our Lady of Paris). This early Gothic cathedral, known the world over for its flying buttresses and majestic nave of stained-glass windows, was built between the late 12th century and the early 14th century. Visitors can climb to the top of the north bell tower (ticket purchase required) and, from the rampart connecting the north and south bell towers, come face to face with the stone gargoyles of Notre-Dame. The great bell, made famous by Quasimodo in Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, is in the south bell tower and reached by a wooden staircase.
Notre-Dame’s interior.
Also on Îsle de la Cité is the Conciergerie (a prison-turned-museum associated with the Reign of Terror) and the Palais de Justice. A pedestrian bridge connects to the smaller Île St. Louis where you will find elegant 17th-century apartment buildings, restaurants and sidewalk cafés.
17. La Sorbonne – The Left Bank’s Latin Quarter, situated around La Sorbonne (University of Paris), is famous for its bookstores and cafés associated with legendary writers of the 1920s (see Dining section).
18. Église St.-Sulpice – Ernest Hemingway lived at 6 rue Ferou, near Église St.-Sulpice (a large neo-classical church featured in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code) and he was a frequent visitor to Shakespeare & Company, a bookstore once located on Rue de l’Odéon where the American expatriate Silvia Beach published James Joyce’s Ulysses (banned elsewhere) in 1922. Shakespeare & Company shut down during the Nazi era and a new bookstore of the same name is on Rue de la Bucherie almost directly across from Notre Dame.
Luxembourg Palace.
19. Palais du Luxembourg – Palais du Luxembourg (housing the French Senate) overlooks the expansive Jardin du Luxembourg – a public park featuring lawns, fountains and a pond where children sail toy boats, as well as a playground, puppet theatre and vintage carousel.
Interior of the Pantheon.
20. Pantheon – A monumental domed church (its façade modelled on the Pantheon in Rome) which serves as the mausoleum of France’s most honoured citizens and contains the remains of Voltaire, Rousseau and Victor Hugo, among others.
21. Hotel des Invalides – Napoleon’s tomb lies beneath the Dome des Invalides, part of an architectural complex containing the Hotel des Invalides – a 17th-century war veterans hospital that is now a military museum. Across the street from Les Invalides is the Musee Rodin, dedicated to the works of the French sculptor.
View of Palace of Versailles from entrance area of Place D’Armes.
Attractions outside of Paris include the Palace of Fontainebleau, a royal chateau favoured by Napoleon (reached by train in 45 minutes from Gare de Lyon) and the Palace of Versailles (a half hour outside Paris by train from Gare Saint Lazare) where Louis XIV (the Sun King) converted his father’s hunting lodge into a magnificent palace set on 2,000 acres of grounds filled with landscaped gardens and dozens of fountains.
Chartres, 50 miles southwest of Paris (1-1/4 hours by train from Gare Montparnasse) is an ancient town famous for its Cathedral of Notre Dame, built in the 12th and 13th centuries, and widely considered to be the finest Gothic cathedral in the world. Outstanding features include its two spires, magnificent stained glass windows and superb sculpture. Henry IV was crowned king of France here in 1594.
Map of Normandy
The rolling farmland and picturesque fishing ports of Normandy were an inspiration to the French Impressionist painters of the late 19th century, led by Claude Monet. His famous works include a group of paintings of the Gothic cathedral in Rouen – the medieval capital of Normandy where half-timbered buildings line the narrow streets and Joan of Arc was burned in the market square in 1431. Monet’s celebrated series of water lilies was painted at his home in the riverside village of Giverny.
D-day at Omaha Beach.
The Norman fishing port of Honfleur, much of its medieval architecture preserved, was a focal point of the Impressionist art movement and its cobbled streets are lined with galleries and sidewalk cafés. The idyllic atmosphere of this seaside town was shattered during World War II when the nearby beaches became a landing site of the Allied invasion of Europe in June 1944. Known as Operation Overlord, the assault began in the early hours of June 6 when British and American airborne forces landed behind German coastal fortifications. They were followed at daybreak by a flotilla of transports, warships and small craft from which thousands of Allied soldiers swarmed ashore. British and Canadian forces landed on Gold, Juno and Sword beaches, while US forces landed on Utah and Omaha – the latter beach the scene of the fiercest fighting. This battle is vividly portrayed in Steven Spielburg’s film Saving Private Ryan, and the Normandy American Cemetery, containing the graves of over 9,000 American soldiers, is set on a clifftop plateau overlooking Omaha Beach. A Visitor Centre provides insight to this momentous battle, as does the War Memorial in Caen, a town that endured widespread destruction during WWII. Caen’s medieval fortress was built by William the Conqueror and now houses a Museum of Fine Arts. The town’s Abbaye-aux-Hommes is where William the Conqueror was buried in 1087. Following his death, Normandy was fought over by various French and English kings until it was permanently restored to France in 1450.
The fortified Benedictine monastery on Mont-Saint-Michel, a rocky tidal isle just off the coast of Normandy, came under frequent assault by the English during the Hundred Years War (1337 – 1453) but was never captured. Today it’s a major tourist attraction with its imposing Gothic architecture and dramatic setting.
Brittany lies west of Normandy and ports of call along this scenic coast include St. Malo, Brest and Lorient. Regional attractions include Pont-Aven with its numerous art galleries, and Carnac – site of more than 3,000 prehistoric standing stones.