Attractions and distractions for kids

Opened in 1996, the new national library was the last and costliest of Mitterrand's grands projets. Its architect, Dominique Perrault, was criticised for his dated design, which hides readers underground and stores the books in four L-shaped glass towers.He also forgot to specify blinds to protect books from sunlight; they had to be added afterwards. In the central void is a garden (filled with 140 trees, which were transported from Fontainebleau at enormous expense). The library houses over ten million volumes and can accommodate 3,000 readers.The research section, just below the public reading rooms, opened in 1998. Much of the library is open to the public: books, newspapers and periodicals are accessible to anyone over 18, and you can browse through photographic, film and sound archives in the audio-visual section.

There are plenty of handsomely ordered opportunities to indulge in a bit of park life in Paris, from the pathways of the Jardin des Tuileries to the ponds of the Jardin du Luxembourg. But if you're looking for something a little less formal, one patch of greenery definitely worth a stroll is the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Set high up in Belleville and often missed by weekenders keen not to stray too far from the tourist loop, this 19th arrondissement gem is one of the city's most magical spots.When the city's boundaries were expanded in 1860, Belleville - once a village that provided Paris with fruit, wine and weekend escapes - was absorbed and the Buttes-Chaumont was created on the site of a former gypsum and limestone quarry. The park, with its meandering paths, waterfalls, temples and vertical cliffs, was designed by Adolphe Alphand for Haussmann, and was opened as part of the celebrations for the Universal Exhibition in 1867.After lounging with the locals for a few hours, head for the park's hugely hip hangout, the wonderfully jolly Rosa Bonheur or Pavillon Puebla. Open till midnight, it makes the perfect place to sip an apéro and take in the stunning views of the city below.

Between the Louvre and place de la Concorde, the gravelled alleyways of these gardens have been a chic promenade ever since they opened to the public in the 16th century; and the popular mood persists with the funfair that sets up along the rue de Rivoli side in summer. André Le Nôtre created the prototypical French garden with terraces and central vista running down the Grand Axe through circular and hexagonal ponds. When the Tuileries palace was burned down during the Paris Commune in 1871, the park was expanded. As part of Mitterrand's Grand Louvre project, fragile sculptures such as Coysevox's winged horses were transferred to the Louvre and replaced by copies, and the Maillol sculptures were returned to the Jardins du Carrousel; a handful of modern sculptures has been added, including bronzes by Laurens, Moore, Ernst, Giacometti, and Dubuffet's Le Bel Costumé. Replanting has restored parts of Le Nôtre's design and replaced damaged trees, and there's a gardeners' bookshop by place de la Concorde.

Once home to the giant slaughterhouses of Paris, Parc de la Villette has kept just a few remnants of its industrial past—a hall, some old buildings—but most notably, its immense size. Spanning 35 hectares, it’s the largest park in Paris. In 1987, Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi transformed this site on the city’s northeastern edge, crossed by the Canal de l’Ourcq, into a vast contemporary park. A Garden City for Everyone Designed as a sort of “garden city,” the park connects two major landmarks: the Cité des Sciences in the north and the Grande Halle and Cité de la Musique in the south. It’s one of the few parks in Paris open all night, and that’s no accident—it’s not fenced in or closed off. Instead, it’s imagined as a space you move through as much as stay in: a place to relax, play, stroll, explore art, or just hang out. A Hub for Events, Music, and Open-Air Fun Its massive lawns regularly host public events. While the beloved Villette Sonique music festival is no longer running, the park is still buzzing with life, especially during the Open-Air Film Festival, which screens movies around a different theme each summer. The vibe is always festive—legend has it that over 2,000 people once got up to dance under the stars during the final credits of Grease. Toward the end of summer, the Jazz à la Villette festival takes over, bringing rhythm and soul to the park. And with both the Cité des Sciences and Cité de la Musique on site, you could easily spend an entire day here....

Up the slopes of the Hauts de Belleville, there are views over the city from rue Piat and rue des Envierge, but as far as panoramas go, you’ll be hard pushed to find a better skyscape than the one rolling below the Parc de Belleville.  This modern but charming common, was created in 1988 to bring a stretch of greenery to the park-deprived 20th, and from its slopes you can see as far as the Eiffel Tower in the west. Needless to say, the best time to come is at sundown when an orangey hue descends over Paris’s iconic grey rooftops. For several hundred years, the area was covered in vines: a nod to which you’ll find in the top part of the park where 140 pieds of Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay vines still produce 2 to 3 kilos of grapes each year. In fact, as far as wine trivia goes, the Parc de Belleville (or at least the ground it’s sitting on) is also linked to the French word ‘piquette’, which means ‘bad wine’ - not because the piquette made here Between the 14th and 18th centuries was actually bad, but because the meaning was changed over the centuries. Piquette was originally a ‘young’ wine.  

Paris's first planned square was commissioned in 1605 by Henri IV and inaugurated by his son Louis XIII in 1612. With harmonious red-brick and stone arcaded façades and steeply pitched slate roofs, it differs from the later pomp of the Bourbons. Laid out symmetrically with carriageways through Pavillon de la Reine on the north side and Pavillon du Roi on the south, the other lots were sold off as concessions to officials and nobles (some façades are imitation brick). It was called place Royale prior to the Napoleonic Wars, when the Vosges was the first region to pay its war taxes. Mme de Sévigné, salon hostess and letter-writer, was born at no.1bis in 1626. At that time the garden hosted duels and trysts; now it attracts children from the nearby nursery school.

The 25-hectare park is a prized family attraction. Kids come from across the city for its pony rides, ice-cream stands, puppet shows, pedal karts, sandpits, metal swingboats and merry-go-round. The playground has an entrance fee.

Soufflot's neo-classical megastructure was the architectural grand projet of its day, commissioned by a grateful Louis XV to thank Sainte Geneviève for his recovery from illness. But by the time it was ready in 1790, a lot had changed; during the Revolution, the Panthéon was rededicated as a 'temple of reason' and the resting place of the nation's great men. The austere barrel-vaulted crypt now houses Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo and Zola. New heroes are installed but rarely: Pierre and Marie Curie's remains were transferred here in 1995; Alexandre Dumas in 2002. Inside are Greek columns and domes, and 19th-century murals of Geneviève's life by Symbolist painter Puvis de Chavannes, a formative influence on Picasso during the latter's blue period. Mount the steep spiral stairs to the colonnade encircling the dome for superb views. A replica of Foucault's Pendulum hangs here; the original proved that the earth does indeed spin on its axis, via a universal joint that lets the direction of the pendulum's swing rotate as the earth revolves.

The Arc de Triomphe is the city's second most iconic monument after the Eiffel Tower - older, shorter, but far more symbolically important: indeed, the island on which it stands, in the centre of the vast traffic junction of l'Etoile, is the nearest thing to sacred ground in all of secular France, indelibly associated as it is with two of French history's greatest men.The first was the man who had it built. Napoleon ordered the Arc de Triomphe's construction in 1809 as a monument to the achievements of his armies, but he never lived to see it finished: the arch was only completed in 1836 (although the emperor did view a full-size wood and canvas mock-up when he entered the city with his new wife Marie-Louise of Austria in 1810). Nonetheless, it bears the names of Napoleon's victories and key military subordinates, and is decorated on its flanks with a frieze of battle scenes and sculptures, including Rude's famous Le Départ des Volontaires (aka La Marseillaise).The Arc has had martial associations ever since: victorious French troops paraded through it at the end of World War I, and the tomb of the Unknown Soldier lies under its centre, below an eternal flame that is relit in a solemn ceremony every evening. The man who relit it on 26 August 1944 is the Arc's other great figure, Charles de Gaulle, who followed the reignition ceremony with an iconic triumphal march through Paris; the text of his famous 1940 radio broadcast from London is immortalised in a bronze plaque in...