As Cole Porter Once Wrote " I love Paris, Because My Heart Is There"

A Paris basic overview for 1st timers or anytimer, that is.

20 arrondissements that spiral out clockwise from the centre, Paris is often compared to a collection of villages. The most visible division, however, is into Right Bank, north of the River Seine, and Left Bank to the south, with the Ile de la Cité and Ile St-Louis in-between. The Louvre is roughly in the heart of the Right Bank, the start of a grand perspective west through the Tuileries up the Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe.



To the east is the beautifully preserved historic Marais; to the north, villagey Montmartre. In poorer north-east Paris, tenements mix with public housing, yet this area also contains fashionable Père Lachaise cemetery, romantic Buttes-Chaumont park, and La Villette science museum and concert hall.


Over on the Left Bank, academic institutions still abound in the Latin Quarter amid medieval churches and Roman remains, spreading east to the new university and business district around the modern Bibliothèque Nationale François Mitterrand. Farther west are St-Germain with its publishers, cafés and fashion boutiques, the Faubourg St-Germain and its ministries and embassies,

Centre Pompidou

This was ground-breaking when it opened in the Seventies, both for Piano and Rogers’s hi-tech architecture and its multidisciplinary approach, and is still one of the city’s most exciting buildings. The modern and contemporary art collection ranges from Picasso and Matisse to the latest trends in installation and video, complemented by temporary exhibitions, performing arts and cinema. It also has an excellent art bookshop and the trendy Georges

Opening times: Sun-Mon, 12 noon-9pm

Admission: €10-€12

Eiffel Tower


This is the monument we all think we know and yet, when you actually see the real thing, there’s still something astonishing about the metal structure, the ride up in the vintage lifts and, of course, the views. It was the tallest building in the world when it opened for the 1889 Exposition Universelle and was originally a temporary structure, decried by many, including Maupassant, who visited every day so he didn’t have to see it from afar. Note that queues are shorter if you come late at night.

Opening times: Mid-June to August daily, 9am-12.45pm (last lift to top 11pm); September to mid-June, 9.30am-11.45pm (last lift to top 10.30pm)

Admission: €13.10 \ lift to top; €4.50 \stairs to second level


Ile de la Cité

This island in the very centre of Paris is where the city could be said to have begun, circa 250BC as the settlement of Lutetia.

Visit the Gothic Notre-Dame Cathedral (most attractive viewed from behind with its flying buttresses), and, hidden amid Paris’s main law courts, two relics of the medieval palace: the glorious Flamboyant Gothic double-decker Sainte-Chapelle, with its 13th-century stained glass, and the vaulted halls and prison cells of the Conciergerie.

At either tip of the island are Place du Vert-Galant, a good place to take a boat trip, and the Mémorial de la Deportation, a sober monument to Second World War deportees.

Jardin des Plantes-Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle
Descended from the royal medicinal garden and menagerie, the botanical garden is on a manageable scale but has plenty to occupy all ages, from alpine gardens and palmy hothouses to zoo, playgrounds and cafés.

Within the park, the Grande Galerie de l’Evolution brilliantly displays stuffed animals according to their habitat, while other buildings are dedicated to palaeontology and minerals.

Opening times: Park daily, 7.30am-7.45pm (until 5.30pm in winter); museums Wednesday-Monday, 10am-6pm

Admission: There is no charge for entry to the park, greenhouses €3 ,museums €7 ; zoo €8

Montmartre

Paris’s highest hill can seem too twee to be true, but it also has a villagey charm that makes it seem closer to Provence than Paris. Avoid the crowded Place du Tertre with its pseudo-artists, and explore the small cottage-lined alleys and stairways, the bars, food and fashion shops of rue des Abbesses, the vineyard and the cemetery. As for Sacré-Coeur Basilica, while most come here to admire the view from the steps, it is worth stepping inside to admire its riot of glitzy mosaics.


Musée du Louvre

Both art collection and royal palace, including parts of the medieval castle concealed in the basement, the Louvre is mind-boggling in its scale and sheer wealth of treasures: from Classical sculpture, Egyptian relics and Mesopotamian antiquities to the unmissable galleries of Italian Renaissance paintings, Rembrandts and Rubens, medieval artefacts and French neoclassical and Romantic painting. The secret to mastering the Louvre is to combine a few key works you definitely want to see with the discoveries you make by wandering aimlessly.
Opening times: Wed-Mon, 9am-6pm; some galleries open until 10pm on Wed and Fri Admission: €9.50

Musée Marmottan-Claude Monet

This Second Empire villa is one of Paris’s secret gems, with its wonderful array of Empire furniture and the world’s largest collection of works by Claude Monet, including several vibrantly coloured water-lily canvases, most of them donated by the artist’s family. Other Impressionists with works on display include Pissarro, Renoir, Caillebotte and Berthe Morisot.

Opening times: Tue, 11am-9pm; Wed-Sun, 11am-6pm

Admission: €9


Musée National du Moyen-Age

This lovely, intimate medieval museum is appropriately housed in the Gothic town house of the Abbots of Cluny, which was built over the substantial remains of a Roman baths complex. Highlights include Limoges enamels, sculptures from Notre-Dame, and the adorable Lady and the Unicorn tapestry cycle, a convoluted allegory of the senses.

Opening times: Wed-Mon, 9.15am-5.45pm

Admission: €8 


Musée du Quai Branly
The hugely popular museum of “arts premiers” (read “tribal art”, or non-Western art), in a quirky building by Jean Nouvel, goes for drama over scholarliness. The museography is a little chaotic and the labelling hard to fathom, but there’s an incredible array of sculptures, textiles, jewellery, ritual objects and musical instruments, complemented by interesting film footage.
Opening times: Tue, Wed and Sun, 11am-7pm; Thur-Sat, 11am-9pm Admission: €8.50 exhibitions €7 collection and exhibitions €10 


Musée National Rodin
The mansion where Rodin lived at the end of his life now contains an unrivalled collection of the sculptor’s work, arranged around its rooms and beautiful garden. In finished works and countless studies for the great Balzac, the Burghers of Calais or the figures that swarm all over the Gates of Hell, you can trace how he revolutionised sculpture at the end of the 19th century.
Opening times: Tue-Sat, 9.30am-5.45pm (until 4.45pm in winter)
Admission: €6





The Paris opera is a glamorous experience. Catch Tosca and Wagner’s Götterdämmerung at Opéra Bastille, or the Bolshoi ballet when it drops into Garnier.

Day trips

Versailles

If you make just one excursion, then it should be to Versailles easily reached by RER. Louis XIV’s vast château, with its extravagant ceilings, hall of mirrors and formal gardens, is an ode to royal absolutism. The town, snooty and bourgeois, is worth a look, too.


Fontainebleau

There’s another grand royal château at Fontainebleau (, a mixture of Renaissance and Napoleonic this time. The surrounding forest is popular for walking, rock-climbing and mushroom hunting. Trains to Fontainebleau leave from Gare de Lyon. If going by car, be prepared for traffic jams on the return to Paris.


St-Denis

The suburb of St-Denis is home to the Stade de France national stadium and the Basilique St-Denis (The latter, birthplace of Gothic architecture and burial place of the French monarchy, has a collection of extravagant tombs.


Reims
• TGV high-speed trains have changed the relative geography of France and mean that Reims is just 45 minutes from Paris Gare de l’Est, allowing plenty of time