Points of Interest

Wether you are visiting Paris for the first time or not, you can’t just stick to a few monuments, museums or department stores. You have to experience the city. Pick the museums, monuments, gardens and districts you wish to visit above all but make sure you make the best of it. There is no rush, Paris never sleeps!

Main museums:

The Louvre is one of the world’s most visited art museums, a historic monument, and a national symbol. Its notable works include Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne, and Madonna of the Rocks; Jacques Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii; Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People; and Alexandros of Antioch’s Venus de Milo. The Musée d’Orsay is a museum on the left bank of the Seine, housed in the former railway station, the Gare d’Orsay. It holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography, and is probably best known for its extensive collection of impressionist masterpieces by popular painters such as Monet and Renoir. The National Museum of Modern Arts is located in the Georges Pompidou Center. a large collection of modern and contemporary masterpieces from 20th and 21 st centuries stands in 2 levels od the building.

Monuments:

La Sainte-Chapelle (The Holy Chapel) is a Gothic chapel on the Île de la Cité in the heart of Paris. It is perhaps the high point of the full tide of the rayonnante period of Gothic architecture. Notre Dame de Paris is a Gothic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in Paris, with its main entrance to the west. It is still used as a Roman Catholic cathedral and is the seat of the Archbishop of Paris. Notre Dame de Paris is widely considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture. The Eiffel Tower is an iron tower built on the Champ de Mars beside the Seine River in Paris. The tower has become a global icon of France and is one of the most recognizable structures in the world. Les Invalides is a complex of buildings in the city’s 7th arrondissement containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the building’s original purpose. It is also the burial site for some of France’s war heroes. Le château de Versailles When the château was built, Versailles was a country village; today, however, it is a suburb of Paris. From 1682, when King Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in 1789, the Court of Versailles was the centre of power in Ancien Régime France. Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy which Louis XIV espoused.

Gardens:

The Tuileries Garden (Jardin des Tuileries) is the largest and the oldest parisian style garden of Paris. It is surrounded by the Louvre (to the east), the Seine (to the south), the Place de la Concorde (to the west) and the Rue de Rivoli (to the north). Further to the north lies the Place Vendôme. The Luxembourg Garden is a 224,500 quare meters public park and the largest in the city, located in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Luxembourg is the garden of the French Senate, which is itself housed in the Luxembourg Palace. These gardens include a large fenced-in playground that is very popular with nearby families.

Famous places:

Place Vendôme is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. The Place Vendôme Column at the center was erected by Napoleon to commemorate the battle of Austerlitz. The Pont Neuf, French for the "New Bridge," is the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine . Its name, which distinguished it from the old bridges that were lined on both sides with houses, simply stuck. The Champs-Élysées is the most prestigious and broadest avenue in Paris. Its full name is "Avenue des Champs-Élysées". With its cinemas, cafés, and luxury specialty shops, the Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets in the world. The name refers to the Elysian Fields, the place of the blessed in Greek mythology. The Place de l’Étoile is a large road junction in Paris, France, the meeting point of twelve straight avenues (hence the name "Star Square") including the Champs-Élysées which continues to the east. It was renamed Place Charles de Gaulle in 1970 in honor of President de Gaulle, but is still largely referred to by its original name.

Districts:

The Île de la Cité is one of two natural islands in the Seine within the city of Paris (the other being Île Saint-Louis, the Île des Cygnes being artificial). It is the centre of Paris and the location where the medieval city was refounded. Le marais is a traditionally bourgeois area. Many communities have lived here : jews at the end of the 19th century, chinese after the first world war and the Gay since 1980. Saint Germain des Prés is an area of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, located around the church of the former Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Home to a number of famous cafés, such as Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore, the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area was the center of the existentialist movement (associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir). Montmartre is a 130 metres high hill that give its name to the district. Located in the north of Paris, it is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit. The other, older, church on the hill is Saint Pierre de Montmartre, which claims to be the location at which the Jesuit order of priests was founded. Many artists had studios or worked around the community of Montmartre such as Salvador Dalí, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.