* Around Trocadéro, the Eiffel Tower and Les Invalides

When it comes to town planning on a grand scale there is little to rival the area west of St-Germain-des-Prés, stretching from the 7e into the 16e arrondissement across the river. The sweeping vista from the terrace of the Palais de Chaillot on place du Trocadéro across the river to the Eiffel Tower and École Militaire, no doubt familiar to many visitors from countless images and photos, is truly impressive. Equally magnificent is the view from the ornate Pont Alexandre III along the grassy Esplanade to the colossus that is the Hôtel des Invalides . The 7e arrondissement is home to the Assemblée Nationale and has the greatest concentration of ministries, embassies and official residences in Paris. The area's main art gallery, the Musée d'Orsay , is also housed in an impressive and unusual building, a cavernous, decommissioned railway station.

* Bastille

Mº Basttille .

The landmark column topped with the gilded "Spirit of Liberty" on place de la Bastille was erected not to commemorate the surrender in 1789 of the notorious prison, but the July Revolution of 1830 that replaced the autocratic Charles X with the "Citizen King" Louis-Philippe. When Louis-Philippe fled in the more significant 1848 Revolution, his throne was burnt beside the column and a new inscription added. Four months later, the workers again took to the streets. All of eastern Paris was barricaded, with the fiercest fighting on rue du Faubourg-St-Antoine. The rebellion was quelled with the usual massacres and deportation of survivors, and it is of course the 1789 Bastille Day, symbol of the end of feudalism in Europe, that France celebrates every year on July 14.

The Bicentennial of the Revolution in 1989 was marked by the inauguration of the Opéra-Bastille , Mitterrand's pet project and subject of the most virulent sequence of rows and resignations. Filling almost the entire block between rues de Lyon, Charenton and Moreau, it has shifted the focus of place de la Bastille, so that the column is no longer the pivotal point; in fact, it's easy to miss it altogether when dazzled by the night-time glare of lights emanating from this "hippopotamus in a bathtub", as one critic dubbed it.

The Opéra's construction destroyed no small amount of low-rent housing, but, as with most speculative developments, the pace of change has been uneven: cobblers and ironmongers still survive alongside cocktail haunts and sushi bars that make up the simultaneously trendy and gritty quartier de la Bastille . Place and rue d'Aligre still have their raucous daily market and, on rue de Lappe , Balajo is one remnant of a very Parisian tradition: the bals musettes , or music halls of 1930s " gai Paris ", frequented between the wars by Edith Piaf, Jean Gabin and Rita Hayworth. It was founded by one Jo de France, who introduced glitter and spectacle into what were then seedy gangster dives, and brought Parisians from the other side of the city to the rue de Lappe lowlife. Nowadays the street is full of fun, trendy bars, full to bursting at the weekend. You'll find art galleries clustered around rue Keller and the adjoining stretch of rue de Charonne ; and indie music shops and gay, lesbian and hippy outfits on rues Keller and des Taillandiers .

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