Things to do

Give your senses a whirl at Paris' best markets

Packing a picnic? Fancy vintage clothes? Or nicknacks? Dive into one of these fine Parisian markets. Marché Bastille The Marché Bastille, held on Sundays, is one of the biggest markets in Paris, lining the Boulevard Richard Lenoir. A favourite of political campaigners, it's also a great source of local cheeses, farmers' chicken, foie-gras and excellent fish. Come on the right day and you might

Go po-mo at Parc André Citroën

• Free

This park is a fun, postmodern version of a French formal garden, designed by Gilles Clément and Alain Prévost. It comprises glasshouses, computerised fountains, waterfalls, a wilderness and themed gardens featuring different coloured plants and even sounds. Stepping stones and water jets make it a garden for pleasure as well as philosophy. The tethered Eutelsat helium balloon takes visitors up

Dig some bones

• Critics choice

This is the official entrance to the 3,000km (1,864-mile) catacombs network that runs under much of the city. With public burial pits overflowing in the era of the Revolutionary Terror, the bones of six million people were transferred to the catacombes.The bones of Marat, Robespierre and their cronies are packed in with wall upon wall of their fellow citizens. A damp, cramped tunnel takes you

Hit up one of the city's loveliest museums

Despite it’s elegant, Belle Époque allure the ‘Little Palace’ is overshadowed by its big brother, Le Grand Palais, just across the road. But ignore it and you’ll miss out on one of Paris’s loveliest fine arts museums, with an extensive mish-mash of works by Poussin, Doré, Courbet and the impressionists, as well as other paintings and sculptures from the Antiquity to 1900. Art Nouveau fans are in

Take a walk around Place Saint-Suplice

• Free

It took 135 years and six architects to finish St-Sulpice. The grandiose façade, with its two-tier colonnade, was designed by Jean-Baptiste Servandoni. He died in 1766 before the second tower was finished, leaving one tower a good five metres shorter than the other. The trio of murals by Delacroix in the first chapel - Jacob's Fight with the Angel, Heliodorus Chased from the Temple and St Michael

Visit the new star of the art scene

• Critics choice
• Free

It's more than a century since Montmartre was the centre of artistic activity in Paris. But now the north of Paris is again where the action is - albeit a couple of kilometres east of place du Tertre, in a previously neglected area of bleak railway goods yards and dilapidated social housing.104, described as a 'space for artistic creation', occupies a vast 19th-century building on the rue