Paris

Paris has been the world capital of cultural tourism for centuries — around 35 million international visitors per year, ahead of London and New York. The city layers nearly seven centuries of architecture inside its Haussmannian boulevards: Gothic Notre-Dame cathedral (12th c.), Renaissance Louvre, 18th-century royal squares, the Haussmann transformation of the 19th, the modernity of the Pompidou Centre and Louvre Pyramid. This historic and architectural density has no equivalent in the Western world.

But Paris is also — and perhaps above all — a city of art-of-living. The cafés and their terraces, the Seine bookstalls (UNESCO since 1991), the food markets (Bastille, Aligre, Maubert), the gardens (Luxembourg, Tuileries, Palais-Royal, Buttes-Chaumont) are where real Paris lives. Each district has its strong identity: the aristocratic and bohemian Marais, intellectual and chic Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the student Latin Quarter, picturesque Montmartre, multicultural Belleville, trendy 11th arrondissement. This diversity means each visit reveals a different Paris.

Parisian gastronomy is among the world's richest: more than 130 Michelin-starred restaurants (the highest ratio per capita after Tokyo), historic bistros (Le Bouillon Chartier since 1896, Le Train Bleu, Lipp), Belle Époque brasseries, and a new generation of chefs (Yannick Alléno, Anne-Sophie Pic, David Toutain) reinventing French cuisine. And that's without counting pâtisserie — Pierre Hermé, Cédric Grolet, Philippe Conticini, Yann Couvreur — a discipline where Paris remains the undisputed world capital.