Paris

💡 About Paris

Paris, the City of Light, has enchanted visitors for centuries with its grand Haussmann boulevards, world-class art museums, extraordinary cuisine and an atmosphere of romantic beauty that no other city in the world has ever quite replicated. The Eiffel Tower, designed by Gustave Eiffel for the 1889 World's Fair celebrating the centenary of the French Revolution, was originally intended as a temporary structure to be dismantled after 20 years — it became such a beloved global icon that demolition was unthinkable, and today it receives over seven million visitors per year, making it the most visited paid monument in the world. The Louvre, housed in a former royal palace and expanded with I.M.

Pei's controversial glass pyramid in 1989, is the world's most visited art museum, attracting nearly nine million visitors annually to see its collection of 35,000 works including the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and Winged Victory of Samothrace. Paris is the undisputed capital of global fashion, home to legendary maisons de couture such as Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Givenchy, and the twice-yearly Paris Fashion Week sets trends that reverberate through the entire global clothing industry. The city's extraordinary café culture, where Parisians linger over café au lait and crêpes for hours while reading, debating philosophy or simply watching the world pass by, is listed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage — a tradition that gave the world existentialism, surrealism and the French New Wave of cinema.

The Seine River, which curves gracefully through the heart of the city, is lined with the bouquinistes — open-air booksellers who have operated along its banks since the 16th century — and its bridges, from the Pont Neuf to the romantically padlocked Pont des Arts, are among the most beautiful in Europe. Paris is built upon an extraordinary geological foundation: beneath the modern streets lies a vast network of quarry tunnels known as les catacombes, which contain the remains of over six million Parisians relocated there in the 18th century when the city's cemeteries overflowed. The city was substantially redesigned by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann under Napoleon III between 1853 and 1870, who replaced medieval slums with the wide boulevards, uniform stone facades and public gardens that define Paris's appearance today.

No city on Earth has contributed more to Western art, literature, philosophy and gastronomy: from Victor Hugo and Marcel Proust to Picasso and Monet, from Escoffier to Bocuse, Paris has nurtured more creative genius per square kilometre than perhaps anywhere in history.

⭐ Known For