Aquaboulevard is a large urban water park in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris, billed when it opened as the biggest of its kind in Europe. The project was launched by the city of Paris together with the leisure group Forest Hill and opened in April 1989, inaugurated that May by the mayor, Jacques Chirac. Spread over some seven thousand square metres, its centrepiece is a tropical-themed swimming area kept warm all year, with wave pools, waterfalls, geysers, water cannons, jacuzzis, a giant .....

Often called Cineaqua, the Aquarium de Paris occupies a remarkable spot carved into the hillside of the Trocadero gardens, directly across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. Its origins are extraordinary: first built for the Universal Exhibition of 1878, it is regarded as the ancestor of all the public aquariums in the world, and it was greatly enlarged for the 1937 exhibition, when it ranked as the largest in Europe. After closing in 1986 the site fell quiet for two decades before a major redevel.....

Standing at the centre of the great star of avenues from which it takes its setting, the Arc de Triomphe is one of the defining monuments of Paris, raised to honour those who fought and died for France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Napoleon ordered its construction in 1806 after his victory at Austerlitz, but the work dragged on through changes of regime and the arch was not completed until 1836, long after his fall. Designed by Jean-Francois-Therese Chalgrin in a severe neoclassica.....

The studio-museum of Chana Orloff preserves the working home of one of the most accomplished sculptors of the School of Paris, kept much as she left it in a quiet cul-de-sac in the fourteenth arrondissement. Born in Ukraine in 1888 and arriving in Paris as a young woman, Orloff became a celebrated portraitist and sculptor in the lively artistic world of Montparnasse, counting many leading figures of the day among her sitters and friends. In 1926 she commissioned the architect Auguste Perret, a .....

Lined with the flagship boutiques of the leading names in fashion, Avenue Montaigne is one of the foremost luxury shopping streets in Paris. It runs through the 8th arrondissement, between the Champs-Elysees and the river Seine, in an area known as the Golden Triangle. The avenue was laid out in the 19th century and originally carried a less reputable name before being renamed after the Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne. Over the 20th century it became established as a centre of haute co.....

Tethered to the ground by a cable in the Parc Andre Citroen, the Ballon de Paris is a giant helium balloon that lifts passengers high above the southwest of the city for a panoramic view stretching across the rooftops to the Eiffel Tower and beyond. Unlike a hot-air balloon, it does not drift away but rises and descends on its cable from a fixed point in the park, carrying groups of visitors in a circular basket to a height of around one hundred and fifty metres. The balloon dates in its present.....

Named after a shipbuilding district in Lyon rather than the French word for fly, these glass-enclosed excursion boats have been carrying passengers along the Seine since 1949, when entrepreneur Jean Bruel purchased one of the last surviving steamers from the 1900 Universal Exhibition and launched a novel concept: guided sightseeing loops departing from and returning to the same quay, with no stops. Bruel's marketing genius sealed the brand in public memory. On 1 April 1953, he staged a mock ina.....

Departing every thirty minutes from Port de la Bourdonnais at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, this fleet of modern glass-walled cruisers offers what has become one of the most popular ways to see central Paris from the water. The one-hour sightseeing loop heads downstream past Les Invalides and the Musee d'Orsay, rounds the Ile de la Cite beneath Notre-Dame, passes the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, then returns upstream to the starting point with the iron lattice of the tower growing larger.....

Far below the streets of the fourteenth arrondissement lies one of the most macabre and unforgettable sights in Paris: the Catacombs, a network of former quarry tunnels lined with the carefully stacked bones of some six million people. The galleries were originally dug to extract the limestone that built much of the city above, and by the eighteenth century the old cemeteries of central Paris had become dangerously overcrowded and unhealthy. The authorities decided to empty them, and from 1786 t.....

Stretching 780 metres from the Eiffel Tower to the Ecole Militaire, this broad formal garden on the Left Bank of Paris has served alternately as a military parade ground, a site of revolutionary festivals, a venue for world fairs, and the city's most iconic public park. The name derives from the Campus Martius of ancient Rome, reflecting its original function as a drill field for the cadets of the military academy whose neoclassical facade closes the southeastern vista. The grounds hosted five .....