Paris

Paris holds to one colour: pale limestone facades, grey zinc roofs, and the Seine running between them. The Tour Eiffel sparkles for five minutes on the hour after dark, and it turns up at the end of streets without being looked for. The collections are vast, from the old masters under the glass pyramid of the Musée du Louvre to the Impressionists of the Musée d'Orsay, housed in a converted railway station. Sainte-Chapelle packs more than a thousand stained-glass scenes into a single room of red and blue light. Montmartre keeps its stairways and its studios, with the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre planted at the top of the hill. The table does the rest: a morning croissant, a zinc bistro counter, bread bought straight from the oven. The quays of the Seine are walked from bridge to bridge, past the green boxes of the bouquinistes lined along three kilometres of parapet.