Paris

The capital of art and the art de vivre, Paris offers an endless list of tempting attractions. Le Paris Chic with all its glory in the big department stores, le Paris by night burning with a thousand lights, its cabarets, restaurants, Parisian brasseries... but also le Paris nature, city of water and greenery. The Alliance of Paris is the head office of a world wide network of Alliances Françaises. It has been welcoming students from all around the world for more than a century, and offers a broad range of courses and exams. A perfect destination which combines language learning and discovering this mythical city.

Website: www.alliancefr.org

To see in Paris:

• Tour Eiffel : built for the 1889 Exposition Universelle to commemorate the centennial of the Revolution, it was the world's tallest structure at 320m until Manhattan's Chrysler Building was completed.
  
  
• Arc de Triomphe et Champs Elysées: the Arc de Triomphe is the world's largest traffic roundabout and the meeting point of 12 avenues. It was commissioned in 1806 by Napoleon to commemorate his imperial victories.
  

• Musée du Louvre: it may be the world's greatest art museum. It proposes a huge number of work of art from antiquity to the 19th century. Some 30,000 paintings are on display.
  

• Musée d'Orsay :it displays France's national collection of paintings, sculptures, objets d'art and other works produced between 1848 and 1914, including paintings of impressionist, postimpressionist and art nouveau movements.
  

• Centre Pompidou: it is the most visited cultural sight in Paris and is all about modern and contemporary 20th-century art.
  
  
• Cathédrale Notre Dame: this French Gothic cathedral is famous for its immense interior, its spectacular rose windows and its frightening gargoyles.
  

• Cimetière du Père Lachaise: founded in 1804, Père Lachaise's 70,000 tombs form an open-air sculpture garden. Most of the tombs are those of famous people.
  

• Sainte Chapelle : the most exquisite of Paris' Gothic gems, Sainte Chapelle is tucked away within the walls of the Palais de Justice. A veritable curtain of luminous 13th-century stained glass illuminates the chapel.
  
  Source: www.lonelyplanet.com