The collection
The Seine · A city arranged in one long spiral
Walking the river tells you more about Paris than any single sight does. The two sides of the river do not match — grand and formal on the right bank, close-packed and academic on the left — and most of what matters sits within sight of the water on one side or the other. Arrive at a landmark from the river rather than the street, and the scale of the place makes more sense.
Paris takes its name from the Parisii, a Gallic tribe who settled a crossing point on the Seine around the middle of the 3rd century BC. Rome took the settlement in the 1st century BC and built Lutetia around it. The arena is still there, off Rue Monge, and so are the baths inside the Cluny museum. Clovis made it the capital of the Merovingian kings in 508, by which time the name Paris was already displacing Lutetia. Its modern shape dates largely from the 19th century, when Haussmann drove wide new boulevards through the old medieval streets and built the parks and public works that give Paris more or less the layout it still has. Paris is nicknamed the City of Light, for the part it played in the Age of Enlightenment, and its 20 arrondissements spiral clockwise from the centre like a snail shell. Much of what the city is known for stands within sight of the water, from the island the cathedral is on to the Eiffel Tower's ironwork of 1889 downstream. Paris has hosted the Summer Olympics 3 times, in 1900, 1924 and 2024, and the most recent opened with the athletes paraded by boat down the Seine rather than walking into a stadium — the first Olympic opening ceremony held outside one.
Gustave Eiffel's company built it in 2 years, from 1887 to 1889, as the centrepiece of that year's World's Fair and the marker of the French Revolution's centenary. It stands 330 metres tall including its broadcasting aerial, was the tallest structure in the world for 41 years until New York's Chrysler Building overtook it in 1930, and the stairs to the second level run to 600 steps if you skip the lift.
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Place de la Concorde
A former royal palace on Place de la Concorde, with courtyards turned away from the square and the Eiffel Tower from the seventh-floor terraces.
It began as a fortress built under Philip II in the late 12th century. Francis I turned it into a royal palace in 1546, and it opened as a public museum in 1793, during the French Revolution. It now shows some 35,000 works across 8 departments, and no visit takes in more than a fraction.
Construction began in 1163 under Bishop Maurice de Sully and was largely done by 1260, though every century after added something. A fire in April 2019 destroyed the spire and much of the roof, and the cathedral reopened in December 2024 after 5 years of restoration.
Napoleon commissioned the arch in 1806, the year after his victory at Austerlitz, but it was still unfinished when he died in 1821. It was completed in 1836, under a different king, and stands 49.5 metres tall at the centre of Place Charles de Gaulle, where 12 avenues converge in a star. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier lies beneath its vault, marked by an eternal flame.
Proposed in 1870 after France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the basilica was built from 1875 to 1914 and consecrated in 1919, after the war. It stands on top of Montmartre and looks back over the whole city.
It runs 1.9 kilometres from Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, 70 metres wide, known for its theatres and cafés. The Tour de France finishes here each year, and the avenue closes for a military parade every Bastille Day, on 14 July.
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