Hotel Paris Champs-Elysées

What to see

The glamour of the Champs Élysées, particularly its upper end, may not be quite what it was, dominated as it is by airline offices, car showrooms and bright shopping arcades. But there's still the Lido cabaret, Fouquet's high-class bar and restaurant, plenty of cinemas and outrageously priced cafes to bring the punters in. At Christmas, this is where the fairy lights go and on December 31st, everyone happily joins in, in their cars, to hoot in the New Year.

The new landscaping project has removed the avenue's side lanes where cars used to prowl in search of parking spaces in order to give pedestrians an equal share of the avenue's width, with shade from more trees. Cultural centers, deluxe hotels and other activities that participate in the tradition and prestige of the Champs-Elysees are encouraged to return by the municipality.

The stretch between the roundabout - whose Lalique glass fountains disappeared during the German occupation - and Concorde is bordered by chestnut trees and municipal flower beds, pleasant enough to stroll among, but not sufficiently dense to muffle the squeal of accelerating tires. The two massive buildings rising above the greenery to the south are the Grand and Petit Palais, with their overloaded Neoclassical exteriors, train station roofs and exuberant flying statuary. They house a number of museums and the Grand Palais is the address for major cultural exhibitions.

On the north side, combat police guard the high walls around the presidential Elysee Palace and the line of ministries and embassies ending with the US in prime position on the corner of Place de la Concorde. On Thursdays and at weekends you can see a strange manifestation of the self-images of states in the postage stamp market at the corner of avenues Gabriel and Marigny.

The Avenue Champs-Elysées, designed by Le Nôtre who was commissioned by Louis XIV to redesign the Tuileries Garden, enabled royalty to follow the sun's course from the Tuileries Palace and watch it set beyond what would become the Champs-Elysées. Nothing surprising from the Sun King, who boded well the future of this triumphal street. The perspective of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées is extended with the Grande Arche of the futuristic La Défense district.