Paris

The Arc de Triomphe is Paris's most triumphant monument, a 50-meter neoclassical arch standing at the center of twelve radiating avenues at the top of the Champs-Élysées. Commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to honor his Grande Armée's victories, it took 30 years to complete. The tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the arch is still tended with a daily flame, and the rooftop terrace offers one of Paris's finest panoramas over Haussmann's grand boulevards.

The Eiffel Tower is the most recognizable symbol of Paris and France, a 330-meter iron lattice tower built by Gustave Eiffel for the 1889 World's Fair. Once the world's tallest structure, it now welcomes nearly 7 million visitors annually to its three observation platforms offering panoramic views over the City of Light. Illuminated by 20,000 sparkling lights each night, it is the most visited paid monument on Earth.

Le Marais is Paris's most fashionable and historically rich district, a neighborhood where medieval mansions converted into world-class museums share streets with cutting-edge contemporary galleries, LGBTQ+ bars, kosher delis, and the city's finest falafels. Anchored by the magnificent Place des Vosges, Paris's oldest planned square built in 1612, and home to the Musee Picasso, Musee Carnavalet, and Centre Pompidou, Le Marais rewards aimless wandering through its preserved pre-Haussmann street network. The area's unique character comes from the layering of Jewish heritage, aristocratic grandeur, and avant-garde contemporary culture onto genuinely medieval streets.

The Louvre Museum in Paris is the world's largest art museum and the most visited museum on Earth, receiving nearly 10 million visitors annually. Housed in a former royal palace, it holds over 380,000 objects spanning art and antiquities from prehistory to the 21st century, including the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The striking glass pyramid entrance, designed by I.M. Pei and added in 1989, is now iconic in its own right.

Mont Saint-Michel is one of France's most recognizable landmarks and a UNESCO World Heritage Site: a tidal island in Normandy topped by a breathtaking medieval Gothic abbey that rises from the sea like a dream. The island is accessible by a causeway and foot crossing, with the drama of its appearance and the extraordinary tidal phenomenon where the bay can drain and flood at remarkable speed, making it one of Europe's great natural spectacles. The abbey, begun in the 8th century, contains Romanesque crypts, Gothic cloisters, and grand halls that make it an architectural masterwork; the village below its ramparts retains much of its medieval character.

Montmartre is Paris's most romantic hilltop neighborhood, a village-within-a-city that perches above the boulevards of the 18th arrondissement and looks down over the entire Paris basin from the gleaming white domes of the Sacre-Coeur Basilica. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Montmartre was the center of Paris's bohemian art scene, home to studios where Picasso, Van Gogh, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec lived and worked. Today the Place du Tertre still fills with portrait painters and tourists, while winding streets preserve the area's character with vineyards, cabarets, and charming squares that retain the atmosphere of the artistic golden age.

The Musee d'Orsay is Paris's temple of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, housed in a magnificently converted Beaux-Arts railway station on the Left Bank opposite the Tuileries Gardens. Its collection spans the period from 1848 to 1914 and includes the world's largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces, with works by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec in extraordinary depth and quality. The vast nave of the former train station, with its soaring glass roof and ornate iron architecture, provides a dramatic backdrop for one of the world's most beloved art collections.

The Musee Rodin is one of Paris's most enchanting museums, housed in the elegant 18th-century Hotel Biron where sculptor Auguste Rodin lived and worked in his final years. The museum's greatest treasure is its garden, one of Paris's finest, where monumental bronze sculptures including The Thinker, The Gates of Hell, and The Burghers of Calais are dramatically sited among rose beds and trees. The interior rooms display Rodin's most intimate works alongside his personal collection of paintings by Van Gogh, Renoir, and Monet, providing insight into the artistic milieu in which the father of modern sculpture created his revolutionary body of work.

Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris is France's most beloved Gothic masterpiece, a 12th-century cathedral on the Île de la Cité that has anchored the spiritual and artistic life of France for over 800 years. Its flying buttresses, stone gargoyles, twin towers, and breathtaking rose windows made it the model for Gothic cathedrals across Europe. Following the devastating 2019 fire, a meticulous restoration is returning this extraordinary monument to its former glory.

The Palace of Versailles was the principal royal residence of France from 1682 until the French Revolution, an unparalleled monument to royal grandeur and the absolute power of Louis XIV (the Sun King). The palace's 700 rooms, including the dazzling Hall of Mirrors, are matched by 800 hectares of formal French gardens featuring the Grand Canal, fountains, and ornamental lakes. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the world's most visited attractions, it remains a supreme expression of the French classical style.

Provence's lavender fields in southeastern France create one of Europe's most iconic summer landscapes, with millions of lavender plants turning the hillsides around Valensole, Sault, and the Luberon purple from late June through August. The Plateau de Valensole is the most photogenic concentration, where endless rows of lavender converge in the warm Provençal light under the deep blue skies. The harvest season also fills the air with an intoxicating fragrance and brings lavender festivals to local villages.

Sainte-Chapelle is Paris's Gothic masterpiece of stained glass, a royal chapel built between 1242 and 1248 by King Louis IX to house holy relics including Christ's Crown of Thorns. The upper chapel is virtually dematerialized by its walls of 15 towering stained glass windows covering 600 square meters, depicting 1,113 scenes from the Old and New Testaments in extraordinary detail and jewel-like colors. When sunlight passes through the windows, the entire chapel is bathed in luminous color in an effect designed to evoke a heavenly Jerusalem, making Sainte-Chapelle an overwhelming spiritual and artistic experience.

Shakespeare and Company is Paris's most legendary English-language bookshop, a ramshackle literary haven across the Seine from Notre-Dame Cathedral that has been a gathering place for anglophone writers, readers, and wanderers since 1951. Founded by American George Whitman, the store has provided lodging for over 30,000 aspiring writers over the decades in exchange for helping in the shop. James Baldwin, Anais Nin, Allen Ginsberg, and countless literary luminaries have passed through its creaking floors and overflowing shelves, making it as much a cultural pilgrimage site as a functioning bookseller.