Parsing Paris

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The rue du Faubourg du Temple cuts through lower Belleville and its cultural cross sections: Chinese dim-sum palaces to halal butchers, French pastry shops to bric-a-brac stores serving a variety of ethnic communities.

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People-watching at the casual hang-out L’Autre Café.

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The venerable Crillon, a “palace hotel” of gilt trimmings and privilege overlooking the Place de la Concorde.

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Erwan advises that Paris’s finest architecture can be found in its train stations—such as the Gare de Lyon pictured here. “I love all those 19th-century buildings created by engineers who worked in metal,” he adds.

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The most famous flea market, beyond Porte de Clignancourt on the north edge of the city, is a treasure trove for antique hunters, with specialist stands chock-full of items from every decade—from Art Deco on up.

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“I think people see Paris as a ville-musée because it has such an extreme sense of time about it,” Erwan tells us. “It keeps the trace of things that existed a thousand years earlier. It’s a city with depth—the more you hunt and dig, the more clues you discover.”

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The ToolsGalerie in the Marais district spotlights the work of young French designers.

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The Eiffel Tower, which raised more than one eyebrow in 1889.

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