Paris

Paris is a beloved city located in north central France. Paris is not only the capital, but also the commercial and industrial focus of France and a cultural and intellectual center of the world. The city possesses an extreme unity of atmosphere that fascinates writers, poets, and painters.

Paris is sometimes called the City of Lights. This term pays tribute to its intellectual preeminence as well as to its beautiful appearance.

Tourism is the biggest industry in Paris with elegant stores and hotels, lavish nightclubs, theaters, and gourmet restaurants. Other leading industries manufacture luxury articles, high-fashion clothing, perfume, and jewelry.

The historical center of Paris is the Île de la Cité, a small boat-shaped island occupied by the huge Palais de Justice and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. Characteristic of Paris are tree-lined quays along the Seine, historic bridges that span the Seine, and vast boulevards that replaced the city walls. Skyscrapers, apartment complexes, and highways have been added to the Paris scene in recent years.

Attractions:
* Place de la Bastille is a district of great historical significance because of its symbolic value, the square has often been a site of political demonstrations.
* Champs-Élysées is one of the many tourist attractions and a major shopping street of Paris
* Place de la Concorde at the foot of the Champs-Élysées, built as the "Place Louis XV", site of the infamous guillotine.
* Les Halles, formerly Paris' central meat and produce market, has since become a major shopping centre based around an important metro connection station (Châtelet-Les Halles, the biggest in Europe). Les Halles was destroyed in 1971 and replaced by the Forum des Halles. The central market of Paris, the biggest wholesale food market in the world, was transferred to Rungis, in the southern suburbs.
* Le Marais is a trendy Right Bank district. It is architecturally very well-preserved, and some of the oldest houses and buildings of Paris can be found there. It is a very culturally open place.
* Avenue Montaigne, home to luxury brand labels, has shops such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Dior and Givenchy.
* Montmartre is a historic area on the Butte, home to the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur. Montmartre has always had a history with artists and has many studios and cafés of many great artists in that area.
* Montparnasse: an area famous for artists' studios, music halls, and café life. The large Montparnasse - Bienvenüe métro station and the lone Tour Montparnasse skyscraper are located there.
* Avenue de l'Opéra is the area around the Opéra Garnier and the Paris headquarters of financial giants such as Crédit Lyonnais and American Express.
* Quartier Latin is a twelfth-century scholastic centre formerly stretching between the Left Bank's Place Maubert and the Sorbonne campus. It is known for its lively atmosphere and many bistros. Various higher-education establishments, such as the École Normale Supérieure, TELECOM ParisTech, and the Jussieu university campus, make it a major educational centre in Paris.
* Faubourg Saint-Honoré is one of Paris' high-fashion districts, home to labels such as Hermès and Christian Lacroix.

Must see's:

Paris from the eleventh century was a popular destination for traders, students and religious pilgrimages. Among Paris' first mass attractions drawing international interest were the above-mentioned Expositions Universelles that were the origin of Paris' many monuments, namely the Eiffel Tower from 1889.

Paris' museums and monuments motivated both the city and national governments to create new ones. The city's most prized museum, the Louvre,is by far the world's most-visited art museum. The city's cathedrals are another main attraction: Its Notre Dame de Paris and the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur receive 12 million and eight million visitors, respectively. The Eiffel Tower averages over six million visitors per year and more than 200 million since its construction. Disneyland Resort Paris is a major tourist attraction not only for visitors to Paris but for visitors to the rest of Europe as well, with 14.5 million visitors in 2007.

The Louvre is one of the largest and most famous museums, housing many works of art, including the Mona Lisa (La Joconde) and the Venus de Milo statue. Works by Pablo Picasso and Auguste Rodin are found in Musée Picasso and Musée Rodin, respectively, while the artistic community of Montparnasse is chronicled at the Musée du Montparnasse.

Many of Paris' local establishments have come to cater to the tastes and expectations of tourists, rather than local patrons. Le Lido, the Moulin Rouge cabaret-dancehall, for example, are a staged dinner theatre spectacle, a dance display that was once but one aspect of the cabaret's former atmosphere.

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