Central Paris is divided into 20 arrondissements (indicated in the postcode by 75001, 75002, etc), spiralling clockwise from number 1 at the centre. But the most obvious division is into Right Bank (north of the River Seine) and Left Bank (south of the River Seine). Parisians typically regard the city as a series of villages, remaining intensely loyal to a particular quartier. The Périphérique ring road separates Paris centre from the suburbs, which fall under different administrative départements.

Ile de la Cité and Ile St-Louis The island where Paris began draws throngs of tourists to Notre Dame cathedral and the jewel-like Sainte Chapelle.

The Right Bank Champs-Elysées France’s most famous road, the Champs (as it is affectionately known) is a huge, glittering avenue lined with mega-stores, advertising agencies and nightclubs and topped by the Arc de Triomphe. It’s always heaving with tourists. The triangle d’or between the Champs, avenue Montaigne and avenue George V is packed with designer clothes boutiques, luxury hotels and fashionable restaurants.

Opéra Extravagant Palais Garnier opera house sits like a lord in the middle of this central district, which is otherwise dominated by offices, hotels, popular theatres and the boulevard Haussmann department stores. This is an important business district, with the headquarters of several French banks and numerous financial companies, thanks to the proximity of the nearby Bourse (stock exchange), even if there is no longer any on-floor trading. Rue Sainte-Anne is a focus for Paris’s Japanese community with heaps of sushi restaurants.

Louvre and Tuileries The colossal Louvre palace still dominates this part of Paris. The Tuileries gardens, which stretch up to place de la Concorde, the arcades of the rue de Rivoli, jewellery boutique drenched place Vendôme and the oh-so-Parisian shopping street rue St Honoré, make this area a veritable hive of glamour and culture not to be missed.

The Marais Countless beautiful 17th and 18th-century stone mansions make the Marais one of the nicest parts of Paris to spend time idly meandering. Its intimate streets are home to both the gay and Paris’s most visible Jewish communities.

Bastille is dominated by its modern opera house and the buzzing bar drag of rue Oberkampf and the Père Lachaise cemetery.

Montmartre and Pigalle With its flashing neon lights, sex shops and the Moulin Rouge, Pigalle is the naughty little sister to the more bohemian area of Montmartre just up the hill. Here the Sacre Coeur offers a fantastic view over Paris and you’ll be charmed by the cobbled streets, scruffy restaurants and artistic vibe that hasn’t faded since the days of Toulouse Lautrec. The Left Bank St-Germain-des-Prés Heart of Parisian café society, with the famous Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots and the politicians’ favourite Brasserie Lipp, this is where Jean-Paul Sartre and his gang of existential cronies hung out. Home to countless cinemas, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Française, today it is also serious shopping territory. The Jardins du Luxembourg is the quintessential Parisian park. Faubourg-St-Germain and Invalides The aristocratic 7th arrondissement with its elegant 18th-century mansions is home to the Assemblée Nationale (parliamentary lower house) and numerous government ministries, foreign embassies and international organisations, such as UNESCO. Visitors may be more interested in the Eiffel Tower, the Orsay, Rodin and Maillol museums, Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides and the antiques and design shops around rue du Bac.

La Défense The ultra-modern business district just west of Paris has grown up around two modern landmarks: the CNIT exhibition hall and the Grande Arche de la Défense. With an atmosphere light years from the city centre, its tower blocks are home to many major French insurance companies, international banks, law firms and multinationals.

GETTING AROUND

The Métro and bus system are an efficient and inexpensive means of moving around Paris. You can either buy a carnet of 10 tickets for €10.70 or one ticket at a time for €1.40 which can be used on the buses, metros and RER in central Paris (higher rates apply for outer zones) and from autumn 2006 on the new Paris tramway. Always keep your ticket just in case the inspectors decide to step onboard. The Métro run from around 5.30am to 0.30am, most bus lines run from 6.30am to 8.30pm with a more limited service in the evenings and a network of night buses after 1am. Taxis are a complicated issue in Paris.

On a rainy evening they’ll be distinctly thin on the ground and for no apparent reason they often decide they don’t want to go where you’re going. Stay patient. Only hail cabs that have their white light illuminated, avoid trying to pay with big notes (they never have change) and only tip if the driver is nice. If you’ve put luggage in the boot, don’t be shocked when the driver charges more than what is on the meter, it’s normally €1 per bag. Thankfully for the all the hassle that can go with them, taxis are not expensive.

SHOPPING

Paris is shopping heaven and despite the globalisation of fashion brands, there are still plenty of individual one-off boutiques here. If you’re after designer names, the rue du Faubourg St Honoré is a good place to start. The newly-designed Chloe boutique is at no 54, Roger Vivier is the current darling du jour for ladies shoes and he’s at no 29, then there’s Hermès at no 24, Lanvin at no 15 and Gucci at no 2. Along its western continuation, rue St-Honoré is the location for lifestyle store Colette, where you’ll find a clever choice of the season’s hottest men’s and women’s wear plus a selection of hip CDs, magazines, beauty products and designer gadgets. For no-fuss modernism, nip into Helmut Lang a few doors up. Chanel is just around the corner on rue Cambon and there’s an enormous Dior store nearby on the rue Royale.

Just behind Opéra, the two heavyweight department stores, Galeries Lafayette and Printemps, have both shot seriously upmarket in the past couple of years, boasting mini-boutiques of luxury brands, spaces dedicated to new designers and colossal perfume, beauty and lingerie floors. Both also have maison stores with everything from kitchen utensils and fine porcelain to designer furniture.

The mythic Champs-Elysées continues its comeback with the arrival of Louis Vuitton’s seven-storey flagship and the swish new Lancel store. Adjoining it is avenue Montaigne, the original Rodeo

Drive, for those with serious bank accounts and hour-glass figures.

Rue de Rivoli is high street heaven with Hennes, Zara, Mango and company keeping it busy all week long.

The best in one-stop shopping for men is Madelios at 25 boulevard de la Madeleine, 75001. Here you’ll find every single suit label imaginable plus casual wear and accessories.

Over on the left bank, you’ll find the first ever department store, le Bon Marché. Aimed less at tourists than its boulevard Haussmann rivals, it has a fabulously chic choice of designers and a gourmet food hall. Nearby St-Germain is great fashion territory. Here you’ll find the Sonia Rykiel and Armani stores on boulevard St-Germain, great shoes as well as Prada and Yohji Yamamoto on rue de Grenelle and YSL Rive Gauche on place St-Sulpice, as well as a host of more original younger names nearby, such as Isabel Marrant, Paul & Jo, Zadig & Voltaire and Vanessa Bruno. Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle (37 rue de Grenelle, 75007) and IUNX (48 rue de l’Université, 75007) are beautifully-designed places to buy unique perfumes.

THINGS TO DO

Paris’s great museums are a must for art-lovers. The museum to end all museums is the magnificent Louvre (www.louvre. fr) for the Mona Lisa, the great Romantics and countless other Old Masters, as well as antiquities and splendid decorative arts. Visit the Musée d’Orsay (www. musee-orsay.fr) for a feast of 19th-century Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. The Pompidou Centre (www. centrepompidou.fr) offers an explosion of modern and contemporary art in Rogers and Piano’s ground-breaking hi-tech building. Independently-run but housed in a wing of the Louvre, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs reopens in September 2006. There are countless other museums well worth looking into, such as the Rodin, Picasso and Maillol museums, Musée Marmottan-Claude Monet and the intimate Musée National du Moyen-Age set in the medieval Hôtel de Cluny and adjoining Roman baths. For temporary exhibitions, check out what’s on at the Grand Palais, Fondation Cartier, Maison Rouge and the Palais de Tokyo or the photo shows at the Jeu de Paume.

For an insight into the Parisian psyche, you can’t do better than people-watching from a café terrace or visiting one of the many street markets that are scattered through the city, usually two or three mornings a week.

The Eiffel Tower is always good fun if you’ve never been up it and don’t suffer from vertigo (www.tour-eiffel.fr) and a nighttime drive around the Arc de Triomphe—where car insurance counts for nothing—is quite a hair-raising experience. Another great way to see the city is by helicopter (www.paris-helicoptere.com).

There are some beautiful parks to be discovered in Paris from the manicured Luxembourg Gardens to the hi-tech Parc Andre Citroen to the delightful Buttes Chaumont in the north of town.

One of the most pleasant activities to be done in Paris is walk. You can traverse the city in no time at all and it’s a great way to discover the countless details that are never revealed in guidebooks! The sportier might want to hire a bike (try the RATP-run www.rouelibre.fr) as the city has a growing network of cycle lanes. Or join in the huge rollerblade rallies that set off from in front off the Tour Montparnasse at 10pm each Friday evening (www.pariroller.com) and from near the Bastille on Sunday afternoon (www.rollers-coqillages. org).

The main tourist office is at 25 rue des Pyramides, 75001, with 24-hour phone information on 08 92 68 30 00 or you can visit www.parisinfo.com.

EXCURSIONS

If you want to escape the metropolis, jump on the RER C at St-Michel, direction Versailles Rive Gauche, and visit the immense Château de Versailles (www. chateauversailles.fr). You have to pay to enter the chateau, but the gardens are free and you can wander through the acres of manicured greenery and fountains to your heart’s content. For a burst of fresh air and nature, why not spend a day visiting Monet’s magnificent garden at Giverny (www.giverny.org). Open April to September.

The glamorous seaside town of Deauville (www.deauville.org) is just an hour away by train from Gare St Lazare. Deauville is host to the annual American film festival, has a lovely long sandy beach, smart shopping, a fashionable racetrack and a prestigious casino.

TOURIST TRAPS

Beware the many tourist-trap restaurants around St-Michel and rue Mouffetard in the Latin Quarter, in Montmartre and around Les Halles—they are often seriously over-priced and serve mediocre food. However 'Parisian’ they may claim to be, most Parisians wouldn’t go anywhere near one of the city’s famous girlie cabarets. The tired routines are today aimed squarely at foreign tourists and out-of-towners.

CONVENTION CENTRES

Congress capital of the world, Paris’s 400 salons and 380 congresses draw an estimated 100,000 exhibitors and 9 to 10 million visitors per year. Paris’s trade fair facilities are dispersed around the city. The main site is the huge Paris-Expo ground (www.parisexpo.fr) at the Porte de Versailles, where public and professional trade fairs range from the agricultural, motor and yacht shows to medical equipment, construction, lingerie and furniture fairs. The Sofitel Paris Porte de Sèvres is pretty much next door (see below).

Other salons take place at the Palais des Congrès at Porte Maillot and CNIT La Défense. Both are easily accessible from the numerous hotels in the ChampsElysées area.

For Le Carrousel du Louvre, try Le Meurice and Westin Continental, which are both a short walk away.

There are two extensive out-of-town sites at Parc des Expositions Paris-Nord at Villepinte, near Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, and the Parc des Expositions du Bourget. Your best hotel option for these would be to choose a hotel such as the Mercure Terminus Nord or the Clos Médicis with easy direct access by RER B. For details, check www.salons-online.com and www.promosalons.fr.