Paris

Paris has been celebrated in such a torrent of songs, poems, stories, books, paintings, and movies that for millions of people the place is an abstraction rather than a city. Mention Paris to a foreigner and you produce an instant image of sidewalk cafés and strolling lovers beneath the Eiffel Tower. Mention her women and you conjure up a vision that is part Catherine Deneuve, part Madame Defarge, part Simone de Beauvoir. To French people living in the provinces, Paris is the center of a universe, the place where laws and careers are made and broken, a giant magnet that draws the essence out of the country. To tourists, Paris is still ...

Paris has been celebrated in such a torrent of songs, poems, stories, books, paintings, and movies that for millions of people the place is an abstraction rather than a city. Mention Paris to a foreigner and you produce an instant image of sidewalk cafés and strolling lovers beneath the Eiffel Tower. Mention her women and you conjure up a vision that is part Catherine Deneuve, part Madame Defarge, part Simone de Beauvoir. To French people living in the provinces, Paris is the center of a universe, the place where laws and careers are made and broken, a giant magnet that draws the essence out of the country. To tourists, Paris is still "Gay Paree," inviting you for a fling, the hub of everything "European," and the epitome of that nebulous attribute known as "chic." Paris remains the metropolis of pleasure, the picture postcard of blooming chestnut trees and young couples kissing by the Seine. Some of these images may be very dated, some more fantasy than fact. And yet through all the clichés threads that special aura of enchantment that neither technical progress nor commercialization has been able to dispel.

About the Expert

Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince have written many guidebooks for Frommer's, including Frommer's France and Frommer's Germany.