Housed in a graceful eighteenth-century mansion at 8 Rue d'Anjou in the 8th arrondissement, Restaurant 1728 takes its name from the year the building was raised and weaves that heritage through every detail. The period architecture sets a tone of genuine refinement, with high ceilings, ornate mouldings and the accumulated patina of three centuries of Parisian history. The house once belonged to the Marquis de La Fayette, lending the address a romance that few dining rooms in the city can claim.....

Behind a seventeenth-century facade at 62 Rue Mazarine, in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, the Alcazar hides one of the most surprising interiors in Paris. The site has lived several lives: a royal jeu de paume tennis court in the 1600s, a printer's workshop in the 1700s, and from 1968 a riotous cabaret famous for its transformist revues under Jean-Marie Riviere. In 1998 the British designer Sir Terence Conran reinvented it as a spectacular contemporary brasserie, opening up a vast triple.....

A taste of Corsica in the heart of Paris, L'Alivi at 27 Rue du Roi de Sicile brings the flavours, aromas and easy warmth of the island to the historic Marais. The dining room, all exposed timber and rough stone, conjures the feel of a village auberge far from the boulevards outside. On sunny days the terrace, framed by olive trees, completes the illusion, transporting diners straight to the Mediterranean. The menu is a love letter to traditional Corsican cooking, from the island's celebrated .....

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.....

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.....

Balzar has been a fixture of the Rue des Ecoles since 1890, when Amedee Balzar, a bearded, red-headed fellow from Picardy, first started pulling pints near the Sorbonne. Teachers and students have always made good dining companions, and this classic brasserie has served as their unofficial canteen ever since. The interior is quintessential Left Bank: gleaming brass fittings, mirrored walls, crisp white tablecloths and an atmosphere thick with conversation and the clatter of plates. Over more t.....

Bel Canto brings together fine dining and live opera in a concept all but unique to Paris. Here the professional opera singers double as the waitstaff, performing arias between courses while diners work through a refined French menu. The original location on the Quai de l'Hotel de Ville occupies a vaulted stone cellar whose natural acoustics and candlelit intimacy turn each performance into something genuinely affecting. A second venue near Neuilly-Porte Maillot offers a larger room for sizeab.....

The historic cradle of the Bibliotheque nationale de France, the Richelieu site near the Palais Royal housed the national collections for centuries and reopened in 2022 after a long and careful restoration that transformed it into a cultural destination in its own right. Books have been kept on this site since the seventeenth century, and the buildings grew piecemeal over generations, their crowning glory the great oval reading room and the celebrated Salle Labrouste, an iron-and-glass space of .....