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In the 19th century the Avenue Montaigne was a nightlife hotspot. Parisians danced the night away at the Mabille Dance Hall until it closed in 1870 and Adolphe Sax made music with his newly invented saxophone in the Winter Garden. Today this chic avenue is a rival to the rue Faubourg-St-Honoré as the home to more haute couture houses such as Christian Dior and Valentino. There are also luxury hotels, top restaurants, popular cafés and two theatres, the Comédie des Champs-Elysées and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.

Everybody wants to race to the top, but don’t neglect the view from the ground. Looking directly up at the magnificent structure makes one appreciate the feat of engineering all the more (see Eiffel Tower).

Guy de Maupassant (1850–93) published this, one of his best novels, in 1885, criticizing the get-rich-quick Parisian business world of the belle époque (Beautiful Age). Maupassant is known as one of the world’s greatest short-story writers, and he is buried in the cemetery at Montparnasse.

The French Impressionist artist was born in Paris in 1841, posed for Edouard Manet and later married his lawyer brother Eugène. She never achieved the fame of the male Impressionists, and died in Paris in 1895.

The main drag of the Latin Quarter was created in the late 1860s as part of Baron Haussmann’s city-wide makeover (see The Second Empire), and named after a chapel that once stood near its northern end. It’s now lined with a lively mix of cafés, clothes shops and cheap restaurants. Branching off to the east are rues de la Harpe and de la Huchette, which date back to medieval times. The latter is an enclave of the city’s Greek community, with many souvlaki stands and Greek restaurants. In the place St-Michel is a huge bronze fountain that depicts St Michael killing a dragon.

Henri III named his son-in-law, Henri of Navarre, as his heir, but when the king was assassinated in 1589, Catholics refused to accept a Protestant monarch. After a four-year war, Henri converted to Catholicism and entered Paris as the first Bourbon king. He, too, was assassinated in 1610, leaving his young son Louis XIII to usher in Le Grand Siècle (Grand Century), as the 17th century later came to be known.

The circular building which houses the Commercial Exchange was erected as a grain market in 1767 and remodelled in the 19th century. It was first covered with a wooden dome, then by subsequent structures of iron and copper. Under today’s glass dome, activity in the coffee and sugar commodities market is covered at a leisurely pace compared to the way other world financial centres operate.

Ernest Hemingway pays homage to this café in A Moveable Feast . It was also visited by Symbolist novelist André Gide.

Guillaume Apollinaire founded his literary magazine, Les Soirées de Paris , here in 1912.