1. Arc de Triomphe

Begun by Napoleon, completed by Louis Philipe in 1836, the Arc de Triomphe was originally supposed to serve as the symbol of French martial power, its interior immodestly emblazoned with a roll call of the nation’s military leaders. It’s doubly unfortunate, therefore, that it was employed by various invading armies as a symbol of the subjugation of the French – from the Prussians in the late-19th century to the Nazis in the mid-20th century. None the less, the nation’s Bastille Day celebrations – held on the 14th July every year – begin at the Arc, with cadets from certain schools, then infantry troops, then tanks setting off down the Champs-Élysées. The Arc is accessed via a subterranean corridor from the north corner of the place de l’Étoile. The 280-step climb to the top is a daunting prospect, yet the panoramic views at dusk are unbeatable, with the attic windows of the Haussmann-style townhouses glinting hazily in the light of the dying sun. At such moments it’s salutary to remember that if alternate plans had been adopted place de l’Étoile would have been presided over not by the Arc but by a giant elephant expelling water from its trunk.

2. Musée des Beaux Arts

If you’re staying in the Champs Elysee district for only a short time and sheepishly realise that you don’t feel like devoting a whole day to the Louvre, why not assuage your guilt with a trip to the Musée des Beaux Arts? It is housed in the beautiful Petit Palais, with its domes of iron and glass. Located just off the Champs-Élysées, the Petit Palais was built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900 by Charles Girault (the Grand Palais, directly opposite, is also a gallery and also houses a science museum with a planetarium.) At first sight the collection – in spite of its fame – can seem a little haphazard, as if crammed with a plethora of minor works from the 14th to 20th centuries, which the larger galleries either weren’t interested in or didn’t have room for. But there are gems here and they sparkle all the more brightly for not being lost amid the monumental collections of the Louvre or the Musée D’Orsay. These include Monet’s Sunset at Lavacourt and Boudin’s Gust of Wind at Le Harve, as well as works by Renoir, Morisot, Cézanne, Delacroiz, Ingres and Manet. The venue also houses travelling exhibitions, many of which draw large crowds.

3. Tuileries Gardens

If, having worked your way down the Champs-Élysées and dodged between the most enticing shops, you’re searching for a refuge from the tireless bustle of the Place de la Concorde, you’re in luck, because the palatial Tuileries Gardens lie before you, stretching eastward towards the Louvre. […] The area along the right banks of the Seine that the gardens stand on was originally home to Paris’s medieval tile makers (tuileries). Having ordered them to decamp elsewhere, Catherine de Medicis had the Palais de Tuileries built as a Royal palace in 1570. For almost 300 years the Palais, and its surrounding landscape gardens, remained twinned with the Palais de Louvre, until being burned down by the Paris Commune of 1871. The gardens, however, endured as a shady promenade venue for wealthy Parisians, with new species of tree and flower added. Today the main thing that strikes you about the Tuileries is their awesome and strangely soothing symmetry. Two ornamental ponds at either end balance each other and in between there is a broad alley, lined with shady, clipped chestnut trees, manicured lawns and formal flower beds laid out at a precise right angle to one another. This perfection is a legacy of the landscape architect Le Nôtre, who applied techniques first developed at Versailles. The only note of randomness is introduced by the folding chairs strewn around both the ponds, but these offer the ideal place from which to appreciate the rest of the gardens, as well as close-up views of the statues by Rodin, among others.

4. Eiffel Tower

Guy de Maupassant, the great French writer and father of the modern short story, hated the Eiffel Tower so much that he had lunch every day in its restaurant – the only place in Paris, he said, from which he couldn’t see the Eiffel Tower. Maupassant wasn’t the only Parisian who was less than enamoured of the tower when it was first built as a supposedly temporary part of the city’s 1889 Exposition Universal (created to mark the centennial of the Revolution.) It was excoriated as, amongst other things, a “grimy factory chimney” – betraying the haughty disdain for mercantile values that still prevailed in the new industrial age, in spite of the supposedly levelling democratic ethos of the Third Republic. Having said this, the sense of revulsion was perhaps understandable when you consider that the 300-metre tower was originally painted canary yellow, rather than today’s sober chocolate brown. Since 1889 Parisians have grown much fonder of it, though some still despair of the way it plays host to a garish, hourly light storm every evening for the entertainment of tourists. None the less it retains its emblematic appeal, having provided the backdrop for epic action on films such as A View to a Kill and Superman II. The Eiffel Tower is always busy, so if you’re planning a visit be prepared to cue for a while. Tickets cost different amounts depending on how high up you want to go. The views from the top floor (sommet) are, unsurprisingly, the best, though those from the second floor (2ème étage) are pretty stunning too – and clearer, sometimes, on hazy days. You can buy a ticket to each of these levels, or a combined ticket to the first and second floors. But the tower offers more than just a succession of views. The first floor features a restaurant called Altitude 95. The name refers to its height in metres and the interior is designed to resemble that of an old-fashioned airship moored above the city. The second floor, meanwhile, boasts a Michelin starred restaurant, the Jules Verne, and a fascinating museum, which contains a plasma screen TV showing looped film of the incredible Millennium firework display that lit up the tower. Even the much smaller top floor contains a representation of Gustave Eiffel’s office.

5. The Basilica of the Sacré-Coeur

The Basilica of the Sacré-Coeur offers even more panoramic views of Paris than the Eiffel Tower, sitting as it does on the Butte Montmartre (‘Montmartre Hill’) in the north of the city. From here you can see the shallow basin of the Île-de-France laid out before you, surrounded by hills. The Butte itself has a peaceful, almost rural atmosphere, its pretty, petit-bourgeois apartment buildings and narrow cobbled streets feeling divorced from the bustle of the raffish (and, to be frank, rather grotty) area of Pigalle below. To reach the basilica you can scale the slopes of the Butte either on foot – up the Rue de Steinkerque – or by funicular railway (to which an ordinary metro ticket offers free access.) The basilica dates from the aftermath of the Paris commune in the 1871 and was built to commemorate the beginning of the Third Republic. However it had a painful and protracted development and the first worshippers didn’t file through its entrance until 1919. The building itself is a huge and harmonious edifice designed in the Romano-Byzantine style by architect Paul Abadie. Its iconography is as much nationalistic as religious, with equestrian statues of Joan of Arc and King Saint Louis IX flanking the great portico. But its real asset is the views it offers, with the shallow basin of Paris laid out below, surrounded by hills. Only from here can you get a true impression of the city in its entirety. After taking all this in, venture back down the steps (politely but firmly brushing off the pestiferous traders) and treat yourself to a coffee or a pastis in one of the charming cafés at the bottom.

6. Musée D’Orsay

	Musee D'Orsay

A former railway station, the Musée D’Orsay displays its origins in its main gallery’s long, vaulted, glass and steel ceiling, which lets in an abundance of natural light. Crammed with masterpieces, it would be almost any other city’s artistic crown jewel, but in Paris is fated to play perennial second fiddle to the Louvre. It was created in 1986 by Italian architect Gae Aulenti and her design was widely applauded. As with may larger museums, the building itself – with its tall, narrow corridors and beautifully clean lines – is varied and intriguing enough to hold the attention of visitors for whom a succession of canvases can become a bit of a blur after a while. Having said that, the Musée D’Orsay experience is in some ways preferable to that of the Louvre in being much more manageable. The long ground floor, lined with a double row of sculptures, is intricately and imaginatively laid out yet never feels cluttered. It is devoted to periods up to the beginning of the 1870s and features work by Ingres, Delacroix, Manet and the painters of the Barbizon school. If you wish to view the rest of the collection in chronological order, proceed straight to the top floor to view the Impressionists and their disciples. Here you’ll find iconic images like Manet’s Déjeuner sur l'Herbe, Degas In a Café and many other works by Monet, Whistler, Degas, Renoir, Sisley, Pisarro, Van Gogh and Cezanne. While at the top of the building, pause in the Café des Hauteurs – a surrealist work of art in itself, offering wonderful views of Montmartre through the giant railway clock. Then plunge back down to the middle level for an infusion of Symbolist painting and Art Nouveau objects. However jaded you might be feeling by this point, do also take the time to stop at the Rodin terrace.

7. Latin Quarter

Newly arrived visitors with only a dim awareness of what it’s like might harbour the misapprehension – as the present writer did – that the Latin Quarter got its name from immigrants who fetched up there at some point in the city’s history and lent it a sensual, southern Mediterranean ambience. In fact it’s the medieval University area of the city, where until 1790 Latin was the official language, spoken by scholars in the medieval colleges that huddle of the slopes of the Montaigne-Ste-Geneviève. For many years it was known as the city’s most bohemian area, where writers and painters (attracted by low rents) created a ferment of intellectual debate and dissidence. Today its denizens are more likely to be politicians and journalists ensconced in luxury flats, but something of the old artiness does persist.

	Latin Quarter

The Latin Quarter is defined, loosely, as being the area along the Left Bank, east of the Boulevard St-Michel. The boulevard itself stretches from the place St-Michel into the heart of the student area. The shops that run along it used to be quirky and unique, but now the retail space has been colonised by the type of run-of-the-mill brand names that you can see anywhere else in Paris. None the less, the traffic-free Place de la Sorbonne is still a welcome place to stop and watch the world go by, with its lime trees, fountains and cafés, all infested by improbably groomed looking students most of the year. Intimately connected to its academic and intellectual legacy are the area’s numerous second hand bookshops, many of the specialising in titles in English. Pre-eminent among them is the endearing, ramshackle “Shakespeare & Company.” Part shop, part library, it’s as far from the modern, corporate book selling ethos of Borders or Barnes & Noble as it’s possible to imagine and was once frequented by James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Today the sympathetic attitude to struggling young writers adopted by its original owner, Sylvia Beach, is still in evidence: the staff are often budding authors who sleep above the shop and work in it in lieu of paying rent.

Academic and literary associations aside, the other great attraction of the Latin Quarter is the opportunity it offers – in a city as exorbitantly expensive as Paris can be – for cheap yet tasty eating. Particularly good value are the Greek and Lebanese establishments, where you can snack on Souvlaki and salad or on Humous and Tabbouleh for a fraction of what you would pay on the other side of the Seine. These and many other ethnic eateries can be found in the crowded, aromatic lanes just off the place St-Michel.

8. Cathédrale de Notre-Dame

Immortalised by Victor Hugo in his great novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (and, for a younger generation, by the Disney animated film of the book), the Cathédrale de Notre-Dame stands in splendid isolation on the Île de la Cité – a small island in the Seine that is the oldest part of Paris. The city’s most monumental Gothic landmark, it was begun in 1165 and, not surprisingly given its immense size and the complexity of its statuary, took two centuries to complete. Since then it has enjoyed two thoroughgoing restorations: one at the behest of Hugo in the 1820s and the other at the turn of the millennium. Approaching the west front of the cathedral, you’ll notice its celebrated 69-metre tall towers and the legendary gargoyles on the Galerie des Chimères that connects them. As you enter, pay close attention to the magnificent carvings over the portals, which depict scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary’s mother and Christ enthroned judging the living and the dead. The last, in particular, displays an unexpectedly satirical aspect, with the damned bearing more than a fleeting resemblance to the Kings and Bishops of the period in which the carvings were created. Inside, the most eye-catching aspect is the contrast between the dimness of the nave and the way light pours into the choir from the immensely tall windows of the transept, as if it were being bathed in heavenly beneficence.

9. Bateaux-Mouches

A wonderful way to see many of Paris’s most beautiful landmarks from a unique perspective is to take hop aboard one of the Bateaux-Mouches that ply the Seine. The leave from the Pont de l’Alma on the right bank (easily accessible from the Avenue George V and the Avenue de Montaigne) and trips usually last for about an hour. The commentaries are repeated in three languages – all of them, if English is anything to go by, featuring some eccentric pronunciation – but many of the views are beautiful enough to speak for themselves. On the way up the river look to the left for the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, the Jardin des Tuileries, the Louvre, Palais de Justice, Notre-Dame and Hôtel de Ville – all in glamorous, flood-lit close up. On the way back enjoy an equally privileged view of the Musée D’Orsay, Assemblée Nationale, Hôtel des Invalides, the Eiffel Tower, the Palais de Tokyo and the fountains at the Trocadéro. Remember also to look up when passing under the bridges for some wonderful carvings, especially on the Pont de la Concorde.

Though it has been the city’s lifeblood for centuries – facilitating trade and commerce – the Seine periodically threatened the city with flooding until the quais were constructed in the 19th century. Though ostensibly a barrier against high tides, these tree-lined walkways today offer the strolling visitor a welcome respite from the city’s tireless bustle. In 2002 mayor Bertrand Delanoë closed the quais and turned a 3 kilometre stretch of the riverbank into a beach for July and August. With imported sand, palm tress and deck chairs, the resultant ‘Paris plage’ was a big hit with locals, adding a fascinating new aspect to the river’s ever-evolving identity

10. Musée du Louvre

Enjoying – or perhaps suffering – a fresh wave of attention thanks to its role as a key location in Dan Brown’s modish bestseller The Da Vinci Code, the Musée du Louvre is arguably the world’s greatest museum and art gallery. Strictly speaking, the name ‘Louvre’ refers to both the museum and the palace in which it is housed. Painting is what it’s most famous for, but it also boasts an unparalleled collection of antiquities from Pharonic Egypt, the Middle East, Greece and Rome. The medieval fortress from which the present day palace originates was built by King Philippe Auguste at the end of the 12th century. Its remains now form the centrepiece of the ‘medieval Louvre’ exhibition beneath the Cour Carré. The building as we see it today dates from 1546, when Francois I decided to built a royal palace on the site of the fortress. (Francois also inadvertently secured the museum’s most celebrated acquisition when he invited Leonardo Da Vinci to spend the last years of his life in Amboise as ‘Premier Painter, Engineer and Architect’. Da Vinci accepted the offer and brought the Mona Lisa with him from Milan.) Subsequent Kings, including Louis XVI, modified and added to the palace over a considerable period, yet the building’s carved pilasters and pediments remained surprisingly harmonious in appearance as it grew. The only jarring addition has been the infamous glass pyramid in the centre of the Cour Napoleon – though such is the grace and beauty of the rest of the Palais it has somehow managed to absorb this alien structure without it seeming too outrageous a blemish. The Louvre became a fully fledged art gallery in the late 18th century, benefiting in large part from the plunder amassed by Napoleon – much of which the French government has serenely failed to return to its original owners.

Just entering the Louvre is a memorable experience in itself. You take an escalator into the vast sunken courtyard beneath the pyramid. Here you’ll find ticket offices, information guides, shops and surprisingly decently priced, high quality cafeteria. Once you’ve purchased your ticket don’t be put off by the monumental scale of the museum – the collections are neatly divided up into seven levels (Oriental, Egyptian, Classical, Sculpture, Painting, Medieval Louvre, Objets d’art), spread over three wings: Denon (south), Richelieu (north) and Sully (east.) It’s an eminently rational layout and you’re unlikely to get lost once you’ve mastered it. Must-see collections include the Italian masterpieces of the Grande Galerie, the French 19th century large-format paintings, the beautiful French sculptures, the Islamic art and the intriguing medieval Louvre. Among the museum’s many jewels, the undoubted highlights include Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (of course) and The Virgin of the Rocks, Veronese’s Marriage at Cana, Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa, Canova’s Cupid and Psyche, the Venus de Milo and The Winged Victory of Samothrace.