Montparnasse

Only in Paris does the idea of ambling around a cemetery seem eerie but also quite romantic — because only in Paris is a cemetery a place of such heart-touching beauty. It’s a poignant kind of beauty, of course. Cemeteries here, as everywhere, are above all about honouring lives past. But, in a country that […]

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Art Nouveau was a decorative style of applied art that flowered in Paris from around 1890 through to the First World War. And flowering was the operative word, for Art Nouveau was inspired by the flowing forms and soft shades of nature — think tendrils, lilies and dragonflies; pale green finishes and shimmering floral mosaics. […]

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Paris in the 1920s is such a glamorously evocative concept … You can’t help but think Ernest Hemingway and highballs, Josephine Baker and dances of wild abandon, Coco Chanel and beaded black party frocks, avant-garde artists and smouldering muses … And, most of all, fun — crazy-mad fun. Paris didn’t call these years les années […]

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France is one of the world’s leading producers of oysters, its seaside towns brimming with shacks that serve up freshly shucked delicacies from local farms. And Parisians are among the world’s most passionate consumers of oysters, that mollusc with the most seductive of reputations. Perhaps it’s because oysters have a long history of esteemed Parisians […]

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