Grande Arche de la Défense

Numerous artists paint portraits of tourists and also sell their paintings.

The house in which the famous French novelist Victor Hugo once lived.

The Jewish quarter, with many small delis and shops. Lively on most days except for Saturdays.

Beautiful round "square" with an equestrian statue of King Louis XIV and matching 17th century buildings.

The Pasteur Museum is housed in the apartment where the great scientist spent the last 7 years of his life. Hardly touched since that time, the museum is full of personal memorabilia and scientific instruments. Pasteur is buried on the grounds in a flamboyant mosaic-decorated mausoleum. The museum was closed to individual visitors for security reasons after the 13th November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks.

Private collection of French, Italian, Dutch masterpieces in a typical XIXth century mansion.

If the queues at the Eiffel Tower are just too much for you and your time is limited, consider a trip up the Montparnasse Tower. This is an office building with an observation and shopping area on the 56th floor, where the elevators stop, and an open viewing area on the roof. Arguably the view is better than from the Eiffel Tower: you are not so high up so things are more visible, and you can see the Eiffel Tower!

Visitable only by reservation and then only one Saturday every month. A richly decorated palace built for Marie de Medici in the early 17th century, which is now the French Senate. For those interested in seeing a Parisian monument normally unavailable to the public, or for those interested in the inner workings of the French Government. The large Luxembourg Garden is open to the public year-round. The garden is home to the Medici fountain, a children's playground, and vintage toy boats for hire that children push around in the Grand Bassin duck pond (a 90-year tradition).

A controversial church serving as de facto headquarters of the arch-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X, who occupied the church in 1977 and have ignored subsequent eviction orders.

The first concrete church

a Roman Catholic church on the east side of the Place Saint-Sulpice within the rue Bonaparte, in the Luxembourg Quarter of the VIe arrondissement. At 113 metres long, 58 metres in width and 34 metres tall, it is only slightly smaller than Notre-Dame and thus the second largest church in the city. It is dedicated to Sulpitius the Pious. During the 18th century, an elaborate gnomon, the Gnomon of Saint-Sulpice, was constructed in the church. In front of the church itself is the magnificent Place Saint-Sulpice which contains the 'Fountain of the Four Bishops'. The church has a long-standing tradition of talented organists that dates back to the eighteenth century. In 1862, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll reconstructed and improved the existing organ built by François-Henri Clicquot. Though using many materials from Clicquot's French Classical organ, it is considered to be Cavaillé-Coll's magnum opus, featuring 102 speaking stops, and is perhaps the most impressive instrument of the romantic French symphonic-organ era. Its organists have also been renowned, starting with Nicolas Séjan in the 18th century, and continuing with Charles-Marie Widor (organist 1870-1933) and Marcel Dupré (organist 1934-1971), both great organists and composers of organ music. The current organists are 'titulaire' Daniel Roth (since 1985) and 'assistant titulaire' Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin. In Saint-Sulpice Sunday organ recitals are held on a regular basis (Auditions du Dimanche, following the High Mass, usually from 11:30am till 12:05pm, during the subsequent mass, a visit of the organ loft is possible).

Opened in January 2005, the Holocaust Memorial comprises a major documentation centre and a wall bearing 76,000 names of Jews deported from France to the Nazi camps between 1942-1944. Includes an archive of a million artefacts, including 55,000 photographs. Excursions are run from the memorial to French internment camp sites such as Drancy.

The C.I.U.P. is a student quarter established in 1925, providing homes for about 10,000 students, scientists, and artists from 120 countries. It has 40 houses attributed to individual nations. The individual houses organise top quality cultural and political events. Among the most remarkable buildings are the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe, the Heinrich Heine House (Maison Heinrich Heine - Fondation de l'Allemagne), the Swedish Student House (Maison des Etudiants Suédois), and the Swiss Pavilion (Pavillon Suisse) which was built in 1933 on plans of Le Corbusier.

A monument to the French art de vivre, housed in a 19th-century wing of the Louvre that has been restored to beaux-arts splendour, its galleries and period rooms showcase eight centuries of Gallic taste in interior decoration.

This street is named in honor for Nicolas Appert, a French businessman who invented airtight food preservation. On January 7th, 2015, it was the site of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, which resulted in the deaths of 12 people. A plaque in front of a former office building memorializes the victims of the satirical magazine's staff.

Between the River Seine and the rail yards attached to Gare de Lyon and Gare de Bercy is a green space which would seem pretty huge if the 12th weren't also the home of the Bois de Vincennes. The park is a good place to hang out waiting for the line to form for sporting events and concerts at AccorHotels Arena.

Suspended above the train tracks this garden is surprisingly calm and chilled-out.

A sculpture by Auguste Rodin in memory of the French novelist Honoré Balzac. The artwork is sometimes considered the first truly modern sculpture.

Housed in a former Beaux-Arts railway station (completed in 1900 for the Exposition Universelle, later saved from demolition and converted to its present use), the rambling, open-plan museum is home to the works of the great artists of the 19th century (1848-1914) - Impressionists, post-Impressionists, and the rest - that were formerly displayed in the l'Orangerie. This is perhaps the most spectacular collection of European impressionism in the world—breath-taking rooms full of Manet, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, and many others. Impressionist represent the biggest draw, but there is much more to explore.