Saint-Germain-des-Prés: Paris's Literary Left Bank

Saint-Germain-des-Prés is the intellectual and cultural heartland of Paris — the neighbourhood that gave the world existentialism, the French New Wave, and some of the finest literary cafes ever conceived. The Église Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris's oldest church, stands at the centre, its Romanesque tower dating to the 11th century. Around it, the cafes Deux Magots and Café de Flore face each other across the Boulevard Saint-Germain like rival salons, both claiming the legacy of Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Hemingway.

The neighbourhood is home to some of Paris's finest independent bookshops, including multiple specialist dealers on the side streets that cater to collectors of rare and antiquarian volumes. Rue de Buci hosts an excellent daily street market. The Musée d'Orsay is a short walk east along the river — one of the world's great Impressionist collections housed in a converted Beaux-Arts railway station that is itself a work of art worth visiting for the architecture alone.

The Luxembourg Gardens, just south of the boulevard, offer 25 hectares of formal French gardens, a boating pond, and a pace of life that feels genuinely removed from the surrounding city. Gelato at Amorino, oysters at Huîtrerie Régis on Rue de Montfaucon, and a final cognac at the Brasserie Lipp round out a quintessential Saint-Germain afternoon. The neighbourhood is most beautiful in autumn, when the plane trees along Boulevard Saint-Germain turn golden and the terrace heaters come on at Deux Magots.