South: Quartier St-Paul-St-Gervais and Pavillon de l'Arsenal
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Brocante

In the southern section of the Marais, below rues de Rivoli and St-Antoine, the crooked steps and lanterns of rue Cloche-Perce, the tottering timbered houses of rue François-Miron, the medieval buildings behind the church of St-Gervais-St-Protais, and the scent of roses are Paris at its most atmospheric. The late Gothic St-Gervais-St-Protais, somewhat battered on the outside owing to a direct hit from a shell fired from Big Bertha in 1918, is more pleasing inside, with some lovely stained glass, carved misericords and a seventeenth-century organ, Paris's oldest. Between rues Fourcy and François-Miron (entrance at 4 rue de Fourcy), a gorgeous Marais mansion, the early eighteenth-century Hôtel Hénault de Cantobre, has been turned into a vast and serene space dedicated to the art of contemporary photography, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Wed–Sun 11am–8pm; €5, free Wed after 5pm; M° St-Paul/Pont-Marie). Temporary shows combine with a revolving exhibition of the Maison's permanent collection; young photographers and news photographers get a look in, as well as artists using photography in multi-media creations or installation art. A library and videothèque can be freely consulted, and there's a stylish café designed by architect Nestor Perkal.

Shift eastwards to the next tangle of streets and you'll find chic, modern flats in the "Village St-Paul", with clusters of antique shops in the courtyards. This part of the Marais suffered a postwar hatchet job, and, although seventeenth- and eighteenth-century magnificence is still in evidence (there's even a stretch of the city's defensive wall dating from the early thirteenth century in the lycée playground on rue des Jardins St-Paul), it lacks the architectural cohesion of the Marais to the north. The fifteenth-century Hôtel de Sens, on the rue du Figuier, looks bizarre in its isolation. The public library it now houses, the Bibliothèque Forney, filled with volumes on fine and applied arts, makes a good excuse to explore this outstanding medieval building.

Amid the antique shops on nearby rue St-Paul is the Musée de la Curiosité et de la Magie (Wed, Sat & Sun 2–7pm; €7; M° St-Paul/Sully-Morland) at no. 11, a delightful museum of magic and illusion. A few tricks are explained, but don't expect to glean all the answers. Automatas, distorting mirrors and optical illusions, things that float on thin air, a box for sawing people in half – they're all on view with examples from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as contemporary magicians' tools. The best fun is a live demonstration of the art (every 30min from 2.30–6pm) by a skilled magician. The museum shop sells books on conjuring and magic cards, wands, boxes, scarves and the like. Groups of schoolchildren tend to visit on Wednesday, so it's better to visit at weekends.

On rue du Petit-Musc, there's an entertaining combination of 1930s' Modernism and nineteenth-century exuberance in the Hôtel Fieubert (now a school). Diagonally opposite, at 21 bd Morland, the Pavillon de l'Arsenal (Tues–Sat 10.30am–6.30pm, Sun 11am–7pm; free; M° Sully-Morland) is an excellent addition to the city's art of self-promotion. The aim of the pavilion is to present the city's current architectural projects to the public and show how past and present developments have evolved as part and parcel of Parisian history. To this end they have a permanent exhibition of photographs, plans and models, including one of the whole city, with a spotlight to highlight a touch-screen choice of 30,000 images.

The southeast corner of the 4e arrondissement, jutting out into the Seine, has its own distinct character. It's been taken up since the nineteenth century by the Célestins barracks and was previously the site of the Arsenal, which used to overlook a third island in the Seine. Boulevard Morland was built in 1843, covering over the arm of the river that formed the Île de Louviers. The deranged poet Gérard de Nerval escaped here as a boy and lived for days in a log cabin he made with wood scavenged from the island's timberyards. In the 1830s, his more extrovert contemporaries – Victor Hugo, Liszt, Delacroix, Alexandre Dumas and co – were using the library of the former residence of Louis XlV's artillery chief as a meeting place. While the literati discussed turning art into a revolutionary form, the locals were on the streets giving the authorities reason to build more barracks.