Europe's Great Cities Guide: Paris

Niall McIlroy finds some surprises in one of the world's most-visited capitals.

If ever a city was preceded by its reputation, it's Paris. No one ever arrives for the first time feeling Paris is completely unknown, for its beauty and sophistication are legend.

There are reasons it is one of the most-visited cities in the world, and each is part of the essence of travel: food, romance, architecture, gardens, fashion, history, splendour.

Although many of the famous landmarks are besieged by tourists - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, or in the case of the Arc De Triomphe, by traffic - just wandering a suburban street in a random arrondissement is an immersion into the experience. And despite the millions of visitors, there are still tucked-away treasures.

On my last visit to Paris, I started by walking out my jet lag in the cobbled streets of Montmartre in the cool shadow of the gargantuan Sacre-Coeur - the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. I was in the company of two local photographers, an Irishman and an Englishman (no joke), but locals nonetheless, and it felt like a smooth, contented introduction, an easing into Parisian life. From on high, I got a feel for the lie of the land and enjoyed the sedate scene around the Place du Tertre; shops and galleries commemorating former residents Van Gogh, Picasso and Dali, the street-side cafes, the virtual hole in the hall from which a man in a navy apron smeared warm crepes with Nutella and served them on paper plates. There was time to drink it in - Paris in a small dose, sans crowd.

Robert Kahn's City Secrets series of books divulges a similar insider's glimpse for it is a compilation of lesser-known gems contributed by locals and frequent visitors.

But instead of being delivered on the steep and windy streets of Montmartre, the newly released Paris volume can be dipped into at home or on the long flight over.

And it doesn't deal just with outer arrondissements, backstreets or margins, old favourites are illuminated in a new light.

First is Musee de la Vie Romantique, especially for lovers of literature and classical music, and contributed by novelist and short story writer Sheila Kohler. Take the metro to Pigalle or Saint-Georges and walk to Rue Chaptal, a straight as an arrow street in the shadow of Montmartre.

A zebra crossing stretches from the wicker furniture and wine barrel at the front of Restaurant L'Annexe, across the narrow thoroughfare to the head of a cobbled path. Shaded by a great fluff of foliage that juts on to the street, the path leads between granite walls and through a gate until it opens into a concealed courtyard. An emerald iron garden chair sits by fiery flowered bushes, terracotta-potted plants edge steps, up to green shuttered arches that look out on to the hidden grounds.

The Museum of Romantics is a lesser known Parisian beauty / Picture: D. Messina

The Museum of Romantics is well qualified to be so; it was built in 1830 as the home of prominent Dutch painter Ary Scheffer, whose Friday evening salon guests read like a who's who of 19th century creative genius: novelist George Sand and her lover Frederic Chopin, opera composer Gioachino Rossini, Franz Liszt, artist Eugene Delacroix …

In later years, Charles Gounod, who wrote the Ave Maria, Charles Dickens and Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev were visitors. And now the memories of these meetings of the minds adorn the walls and display cabinets of the 'New Athens' townhouse and its two artist workshops. There are Scheffer paintings and more contemporary works, furniture, jewels and ornaments that belonged to George Sand, plaster casts; one of Sand's right arm, the other of Chopin's left hand, as well as novels by some of Scheffer's contemporaries and the works of his nephew - novelist and philosopher Joseph Renan.

Access to the permanent collections is free but there may be admission charges to temporary exhibitions which have included readings of the works of William Blake and Lord Byron, performances of Chopin and Liszt, art displays such as Watercolours - 1820-1880. Between March and October the little tearoom is open in the gardens.

parismusees.paris.fr/en.

It's pretty hard to hide an arena in a big city but Les Arenes de Lutece lay uncovered in Paris for the best part of 2000 years. In City Secrets, journalist and writer David McConnell describes it as a "rarissime", or rare remnant of Lutetia, the ancient Roman city which was renamed Paris in 360AD and of which little has been found.

Ruins are occasionally unearthed when building foundations or roads are dug - exactly what happened when the arena was accidentally exposed in 1860 during the construction of a street called Rue Monge and a tramway depot.

My "rediscovery" felt decidedly accidental, too, although my guide Olivier Marie-Antoine knew exactly what he was looking for. We had spent the morning cycling electric bikes around the French capital on a sunny March day on his aptly named Paris Charms and Secrets tour. We'd parked our two-wheelers in the Latin Quarter near our hotel and took a short walk along Rue Monge, an unremarkably pretty street in a city that's full of them.

So well hidden is the arena that when Olivier suddenly stopped on Rue Monge, a couple of us, cameras to our eyes, almost walked into the back of him. Then we blinked around blindly like badgers thrust into full sun. Our destination was another tucked-away treat.

"Most people don't stop here because they don't think there's anything attractive," Olivier said before disappearing through a stone archway - as inconspicuous as such a structure can be.

From the shady street we emerged as if through some cosmic wormhole on to stone terraces, the northern end of a 2000-year-old Roman arena. The large walled oval was covered in light sand and has a decidedly "neighbourhood" feel, surrounded by suburbia.

But it is still the scene of daily "combat"; nowadays, it's football, bocce and petanque rather than tiger fights, pride rather than lives are lost and the adversaries are squealing school-aged children and teenagers instead of roaring lions, gladiators and unlucky prisoners. Park benches dotted the perimeter in front of the wall niches that once housed wild animals set to slaughter or be slaughtered.

The long-lost Arena of Lutetia / Picture supplied

We made for a pretty thin crowd, not a patch on the 17,000-soul sell-outs the grandiose arena once boasted; this was the heart of a community, a place of great importance known far and wide. As McConnell writes, "The Roman poet Martial mentions boys raking sanguineam humum smooth between gladiatorial duels and venationes or wild beast 'hunts', both of which really took place here."

So how does a massive arena just get lost? The question is especially puzzling because the neighbourhood has always been known as Les Arenes - locals knew it was there, they just weren't quite sure where.

Some of the arena's stonework was carted off to reinforce Lutetia's walls when the city was attacked by barbarians around 280AD. The arena was then used as a cemetery and completely filled in when the wall of Philip Augustus was built to encircle Paris around the turn of the 13th century.

Out of sight, out of mind, perhaps, address unknown until the city underwent another transformation mid-19th century and what is Paris' oldest known structure was unearthed. As I stood in the middle on a thin layer of sand, now dusty yellow, the tale of its disappearance and rediscovery seemed as implausible as the echoes of erstwhile barbarity, pain, suffering and applause in the middle of a city now known for romance, elegance and beauty. But this is Paris…

While Paris' secrets lie just under the surface, its symbols have always been front and centre.

The Eiffel Tower - Gustave's metal masterpiece, a singular bronze spire steepling skywards - is known the world over. I did what comes naturally in the shadow of an icon, got flat on my back and snapped away, wanting every angle.

More than six million visit a year, so I expected the crowds but was surprised by the tiny, multifarious miniatures laid out on bed sheets, kitchen linen and newspaper. Behind each, a satchel-bearing salesman.

Removing myself, I wandered alone up the Parc du Mars to Place Joffre and the Ecole Militaire, where the bronze statue of great French World War I general Joseph Jacques Cesaire Joffre stood proudly below the tricolore that fluttered on the military college roof.

Ecole Militaire, a grand building - near the Eiffel Tower / Picture: Niall McIlroy

But if I'd had the pocket-sized City Secrets as my companion, I could have made more of the early afternoon. If I'd turned left from the tower, I'd have followed the Seine along Quai Branly. A few minutes stroll along the river the Musee Du Quai Branly holds indigenous artefacts from civilisations all over the world. According to science writer and art historian Cecilia Wong, even the vaguely interested should visit to enjoy the 21st century architecture of Paris' newest major museum in a building which is visually removed from how we expected such places to look.

". . . the total sensorial experience guides you seamlessly through various dramatically lit exhibits, many in cubicles that jut out of the building itself, like cargo containers," she writes.

"You lose yourself . . . and are now continents away from the carnival that is the Eiffel Tower, just once city block away."

quaibranly.fr.

And if I'd checked behind the military college, I'd have found myself in yet another different world within this one city.

A UNESCO building in a European capital is hardly surprising but at the centre of the vast UN compound is a sanctuary in which to shelter from the commotion outside and, just a few hundred metres from the tower, I may just have had it to myself.

Herve Digne writes that the Japanese Garden of Peace, "will most likely never be famous, much less known to Parisians".

That is part of its appeal.

A tranquil place in the great city, unknown to many Parisians - UNESCO Japanese Gardens / Picture: UNESCO

Designed by Isamu Noguchi and built from 1952-56 by Toemon Sano, the 16th in a line of Japanese gardeners, the Jardin Japonais is a melding of Asian and European influences. It was certainly before its time and being in Paris, comes with a stylish twist: unlike traditional Japanese gardens, it was designed to be viewed in its entirety from an upper platform. The floor of the meditation space is made from granite from Hiroshima: at once the beauty of nature and the madness of man wrapped up in the HQ of the body that's meant to keep the world on an even keel.

Another secret surprise, a rather pretty paradox in a city that just bursts with them.

unesco.org/visit/jardin.

City Secrets: Paris. Series editor Robert Kahn. Granta Publications, 2014: $24.95.