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see + do
Paris see + do
With upward of 150 museums, scores of parks, lively café-lined boulevards—plus too many monuments and landmark buildings to count—this city and its must-sees of culture and entertainment are best savored over years. If you only have a few days, you can't go wrong with the obvious sights: the Louvre's extensive collection of art from antiquity onward; the Impressionist canvases of the grandiose Musée d'Orsay; and Notre-Dame de Paris, the Gothic cathedral midstream in the Seine. While the Eiffel Tower is another no-brainer, it's best enjoyed from a distance: Instead of queuing up with the massive crowd waiting to ascend to the pinnacle, head for the steps fronting Montmartre's Sacré-Coeur basilica, and you'll be rewarded with amazing views that include the Eiffel Tower's elegant fretwork frame. You'll do equally well relaxing on a park bench in the Luxembourg Gardens on a warm afternoon, strolling through the Right Bank's boutique-lined Marais neighborhood, or people-watching from a café in Saint Germain-des-Prés. But the key to finding the Paris everyone falls in love with is to get off the well-trodden tourist circuit and explore the city on foot or by bike, discovering hidden courtyards, pocket-size gardens, and unbelievably romantic streetscapes along the way.
Over the last decade, hip Paris has been leaning farther and farther east, as mega-rehab projects transform what was a dowdy part of town. The Place de la...more
Long a working-class neighborhood with an edge, the Canal St-Martin is the latest quartier to be reinvented by artists and young bohemians. Built in the early...more
When it opened in 1977, the intention of this inside-out modern art museum—the staircases and pipes are famously exposed on its exterior—was to...more
People visit Versailles in the hopes of being absolutely dazzled by opulence. They're rarely disappointed. The palace is glorious, but unless you already have a...more
It's hard to imagine just how avant-garde this tower of cast-iron girders was when it was built in 1889 to celebrate the World's Fair and the centenary of the...more
Midstream in the Seine, the Île de la Cité is Paris's birthplace, where a Celtic tribe known as the Parisii built their wattle settlement around 250...more
With a convenient location and well-equipped kitchens, this cooking school offers a two-hour, hands-on course taught by working chefs. You'll learn how to cook...more
On that inevitable day when you don't want to go to a museum and you're sick of shopping, come to the Luxembourg Gardens. Quite simply, there's no better...more
Paris was one of the pioneering cities in the birth of photography: It was recognized as an art form here long before anywhere else. This handsome 17th-century...more
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