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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.

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.

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

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.

Opened in 1927, this former coal depot was transformed by artists into a lavish, Art Deco brasserie. It attracted such luminaries as Louis Aragon and François Sagan.

This café has been patronized by the likes of Henry Miller Apollinaire and Jacques Prévert.

Paris’s world-famous university was founded in 1253 and was originally intended as a theology college for poor students but it soon became the country’s main centre for theological studies. It was named after Robert de Sorbon, confessor to Louis IX. Philosophers Thomas Aquinas (c.1226–74) and Roger Bacon (1214–92) taught here; Italian poet Dante (1265–1321), St Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), the founder of the Jesuits, and church reformer John Calvin (1509–64) are among its impressive list of alumni. Its tradition for conservatism led to its closure during the Revolution (it was re-opened by Napoleon in 1806) and to the student riots of 1968 (see Top 10 Events in the French Revolution).

Camus, de Beauvoir and James Joyce are among the many writers who once took their daily coffee here.