Where to drink
La Buvette, Rue Saint-Maur. A wine bar the size of a hallway, standing room only, in a former dairy shop whose tiled walls the owner refused to touch.
For all the gifts you need to lug home
A tucked-away stall along the Seine, one of the green bouquiniste boxes that have lined the riverbank for centuries. Dog-eared Baudelaire and Rimbaud stacked in with old postcards and yellowed sheet music, none of it organized, all of it worth the dig. The bouquiniste knows every book in the box; ask, and he'll find it before you do.
Where to look up
At the Louvre, the Salle des Bronzes Antiques — Sully Wing, first floor, room 32 — a room that has held more than 1,000 bronze and precious metal works since the 1550s. Absurdly easy to dismiss while en route elsewhere in the museum. In 2010, Cy Twombly became the first American ever given a permanent installation at the Louvre, turning the ceiling into a wash of blue meant to sit alongside the room's Greek and Roman bronzes, the surface scattered with floating discs inscribed with the names of Hellenic sculptors like Phidias and Praxiteles.
Where to look at light
Sainte-Chapelle, on the Île de la Cité. Fifteen soaring panels of 13th-century stained glass, easy to underestimate from the outside, unforgettable the moment the sun cooperates. Go early, before the tour groups arrive.
Where to sit and have a think
Jardin Catherine Labouré, Rue de Babylone. Walled off from the street and easy to walk past without noticing the gate, this was once a convent orchard and still feels like one — apple trees, gravel paths, a handful of benches, and almost no one who isn't local.
Where to eat
Terroirs d'Avenir, Rue du Nil. A butcher, a fishmonger, a greengrocer, and a bakery, strung along one short street that supplies half the kitchens in Paris before it supplies anyone else. The chocolate croissant may provoke a life-altering epiphany.
