Paris

Paris is situated in Northern France on the banks of the River Seine. With a population of over twelve million people, the French capital is at the heart of the Île-de-France region. Paris earned her name, The City of Light, during The Age of Enlightenment when many visionary ideas were born. It is a light that has remained undimmed, and which now attracts 42 million visitors a year, making Paris the foremost visited city altogether the planet.

Paris may be a city easily explored by Metro, taxi, and bicycle, but her charms are best found on foot. Her attractions are rarely far separated, and in the middle of, well, only strolling her lanes is to meander through picture postcards. The engine room in Paris is La Défense. This modern downtown, crammed with light and art, is testimony that Paris is meant for living, even when at work. From the futuristic Grande Arche at La Défense, the six-mile-long Historical Axis of Paris leads us back to France's grand past.

The Arc de Triomphe, worked by Napoleon, ascends from the focal point of Place Charles de Gaulle and offers ordering perspectives on the 12 thousand roads, which transmit outwards like a star. From the Arc de Triomphe, The Champs-Élysées continues along the Historic Axis. This grand avenue is where Parisians come to dine, shop, enjoy the stage, and to celebrate life. Gradually opening into formal gardens and majestic buildings, The Champs-Élysées merges into the most important square in Paris, the Place de la Concorde. Just a brief stroll away is that the world's greatest treasure-house of art, the Musée du Louvre.

Once a 14th Century Palace, today the Louvre is that the most visited gallery within the world. With over 35,000 artworks, her most famous residents are the Mona Lisa and therefore the Venus de Milo. But be warned, this collection of priceless artworks and antiquities is simply too vast to explore in just one day. Not far from the Musée du Louvre stands the Centre Pompidou, displaying the largest collection of modern art in Europe.

Parisians are still debating whether this radical design is the vision of a madman or a genius! Notre Dame Cathedral is situated on Île de la Cité, a natural island within the River Seine. Completed in 1345, this gothic masterpiece with her flying buttresses and gargoyles has played center stage to some of the defining moments of French history and literature. Parisians see it as their duty to enjoy life to its fullest.

The Luxembourg Gardens, with its Grand Basin, organic product forests, and more than 100 sculptures and wellsprings is that the perfect spot to snatch a deckchair and play the 'Parisian very still'. Nothing says Paris like the Eifel Tower. Thatcher has often seen everywhere in the town. However, nothing can prepare you for the moment when you first stand at her feet or the views from the top that you will hold dear for a lifetime.

Looking north, the city rises into the hillside neighborhood of Montmartre. Once the artistic center of Paris, her twisting streets and narrow lanes were at just one occasion the house of Picasso, Dali, and van Gogh. They are the right place to lose yourself and find out those special Parisian moments. But you can never be lost for long in Montmartre, as long as you head upwards you'll eventually come to her gleaming white crown, Sacré-Cœur Basilica. Leave the bustling city behind and step through the gates of The Cimetière du Père-Lachaise.

Here, amid the quiet world of bird song and introspection, you can pay your respects to Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and some of the world's greatest minds for whom Paris is now forever home. Once a day's coach journey from central Paris, the Palace of Versailles is now a simple half-hour train ride off. This grand seventeenth-century Château invites everybody, from heads of state to explorers.

The River Seine runs throughout the guts of Paris, creating a natural divide between her famous Left and Right Banks. Of her 37 bridges, The Pont Alexandre III is taken into account the foremost ornate, while the graceful Pont Des Arts offers some incredible vistas of the town. Artists and photographers gather here to capture the sunshine, while lovers attach padlocks to the railings as if to mention "This is Paris, now we are Paris too”.