We venture into a place that most Parisians as well as most visitors forget: a colorful immigrant neighborhood in northern Paris, where Luxury is extremely present. There outstanding craftspeople and young designers take advantage of the affordable rents to create for great couturiers and to develop their own collections.

The owners of these establishments receive us personally. Exceptionally, they explain their backgrounds, projects and techniques. They take us into their workshops, which are impressive – sometimes for their materials and equipment, and sometimes by revealing what a skilled craftman produces with merely a table and expertly-wielded tools.

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The “most beautiful avenue in the world”, Les Champs-Elysées is a breathtaking segment of a straight space that begins at the Louvre, cuts through the city and merges with the horizon. Created in the Sun King’s time (c.1680), it is one of the most influential urban designs ever imagined. Why did it originate in Paris?

Our walk starts at the Arc de Triomphe, which honors the armies of the Revolution and Napoleon. At its summit is a groundbreaking freize: for the first time in Western art soldiers are shown not as imaginary; like the nude warriors at its base; but as real men of the people. But the drummer-boys, bearded veterans, wounded, camp followers and even oxen are placed so high that one needs binoculars to decipher them. (We bring ours.) Why?
We stroll down the Avenue and conclude at the majestic Place de la Concorde, last and most spectacular of the city’s royal Places. An ancient Egyptian obelisk rises up there. Why?

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Visitors and Parisians alike overlook to Palais Royal Gardens, which are hidden from the street. Yet
that enclosed world harbors boutiques where luxury as it was once understood remains, and that connoisseurs patronize.

We introduce you to the most exceptional.The owners, who hospitably receive us, may give us their views on the impact of the recent encroachment of brand-name merchandise – and tell us how the market for quality is holding up.

Then we continue with the last independent workshop to make hand-made flowers for haute couture and the mysterious glass-covered passage where Nana, Emile Zola’s 19th-century courtesan, contemplated the superb gifts that her protectors would buy. We end in shop with spectacular decor, where the owner receives us as if we were guests in her salon.

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In the heart of the Marais, your guide, a passionate of History and Art History who has collaborated with many historians, curators and heritage directors of Museums, unravel the story of this quarter, The aristocratic Marais: the home of the literary salons of the French aristocracy in the 17th and 18th centuries. He will show you the buildings which have survived to this day, such as the hôtels of Sully, Albret, Donon, Sallé and Beauvais, illustrating the life and world of that period.

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A distant, squalid place that authorities feared and police let be, Montmartre became as important to art history as Athens or Florence (c. 1870-1910).

Why did Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso and others live there when young? Why did dance halls like the Moulin Rouge, with their prostitutes and pimps, line the bottom of the hill? Why does the gigantic church of the Sacre-Coeur, which has nothing to do with its surroundings, loom over a large part of the city?

We pass quickly through the tiny area that mass tourism dominates (and show some of it from unexpected angles) to cross invisible frontiers where few visitors pass, to show famous paintings on the sites where they were painted, learn how the cancan taunted authority with every step and discover the explosive origin of the Sacré-Coeur, a matter that most tourism, media and even recent school programs leave out.

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