Paris

Book tickets online (essential) for the second or third floor platform for the best city views. Return after dark to watch the tower's hourly light show sparkle across the Seine.

The world's largest art museum contains 380,000 works. Focus on the Richelieu Wing (French paintings) and Denon Wing (Italian sculpture). The Mona Lisa room is always crowded.

Paris's most fashionable district blends medieval streets, Jewish delis, gay bars, art galleries, and the grand Place des Vosges. Explore on foot — every alley reveals something extraordinary.

The Sun King's incomprehensible palace complex is just 45 minutes from Paris. The Hall of Mirrors, royal apartments, and 800-hectare gardens demand a full day of exploration.

Climb through bohemian streets to the hilltop basilica that overlooks all of Paris. Artists, street musicians, and the best city panorama in the French capital await.

Housed in a jaw-dropping Beaux-Arts railway station on the Seine, the Orsay holds the world's greatest collection of Impressionist art — every Monet, Van Gogh, and Degas you've dreamed of, with far fewer crowds than the Louvre. The rooftop café viewed through the station's giant clock face is one of Paris's best-kept secrets.

Tucked behind the Palais de Justice on Île de la Cité, this 13th-century Gothic chapel has 15 floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows that turn sunlight into liquid colour. Most tourists sprint past it on the way to Notre-Dame and never look back — go on a sunny morning and bring sunglasses.

Napoleon's triumphal arch sits at the epicentre of 12 radiating avenues, and climbing its 284 steps delivers arguably the best panorama in Paris — because you can actually see the Eiffel Tower from here. Go at dusk when the lights of the Champs-Élysées ignite below.

Six million Parisians are interred in 300km of former quarry tunnels beneath the city streets, and you can walk through their ossuary on a genuinely eerie underground tour. Book online weeks in advance — tickets sell out fast, and this is absolutely not for the claustrophobic.

Paris's most deliberately provocative building — structural guts turned inside out in a riot of primary-coloured pipes — houses Europe's largest collection of modern and contemporary art. The rooftop terrace gives a free view of central Paris that almost nobody finds.

A Bateaux Mouches cruise is the most efficient way to see Paris's greatest monuments — Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Orsay, the Louvre — from the angle they were designed to be seen from. Do it at night when everything is lit up and reflections double every landmark in the dark water.