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Mata Hari, the Dutch spy and exotic dancer, set up her lair in Room 113 before finally being arrested outside 25 Avenue Montaigne.

Three floors of pilasters feature on this 1713 mansion. Formerly the Russian embassy, Czar Nicolas II lived here in 1896. It is now a government building.

Dating from 1728, this mansion belonged to the Avaray family for nearly 200 years. It became the Dutch Embassy in 1920.

One of the most beautiful mansions in the area, built in 1721, is now the official residence of the French prime minister.

Henry Miller drank here at the time of writing his Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer .

This institute was founded in 1980 to promote cultural relations between France and the Arab world. The stunning building (1987) designed by architect Jean Nouvel features a southern wall of 1,600 photo-sensitive metal screens that open and close like a camera aperture to regulate light entering the building. The design is based on the latticed wooden screens of Islamic architecture. Inside are seven floors of Islamic artworks, from 9th-century ceramics to contemporary art, and ancient astrolabes used by astronomers of old.

The 17th-century royal medicinal herb garden was planted by Jean Hérouard and Guy de la Brosse, physicians to Louis XIII. Opened to the public in 1640, it flourished under the curatorship of Comte de Buffon in the mid-18th century. It contains some 10,000 species, including the first Cedar of Lebanon planted in a French tropical greenhouse, and Alpine, rose and winter gardens (see Cedar of Lebanon).

These gardens were first laid out as part of the old Tuileries Palace, adjacent to the Louvre, which was built for Catherine de Médici in 1564 but burned down in the Paris Commune of 1871. André Le Nôtre redesigned them into formal French gardens in 1664, and they were opened to the public. At the Louvre end is the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, erected by Napoleon in 1808. Here is also the entrance to the underground shopping centre, the Carrousel du Louvre. Nearby, sensuous nude sculptures by Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) adorn the ornamental pools and walkways. At the far end is the hexagonal pool, the Jeu de Paume gallery and the Musée de l’Orangerie, famous for its giant canvases of Monet waterlilies.

This 25-ha (60-acre) park is a swathe of green paradise on the very urban Left Bank. The formal gardens are set around the Palais du Luxembourg, with broad terraces circling the central octagonal pool. A highlight of the garden is the beautiful Fontaine de Médicis (see Molière Fountain). Many of the garden’s statues were erected during the 19th century, among them the monument to the painter Eugène Delacroix and the statue of Ste Geneviève, patron saint of Paris. There is also a children’s playground, open-air café, a bandstand, tennis courts, a puppet theatre and even a bee-keeping school.