North of Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Élysées
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North of the Arc de Triomphe, the 16^e and 17^e arrondissements are for the most part cold and soulless, their huge fortified apartments empty much of the time while their owners – royal, exiled royal, ex-royal or just extremely rich – jet between their other residences dotted about the globe. The eighth arrondissement north of the Champs-Élysées, however, has more to offer commercially and culturally with some of the hôtels particuliers (mansions) housing select museums. One such building, the Hôtel André, offers the highlight of the area, the magnificent art collection of the Musée Jacquemart-André.

The best avenue to start wandering down from place de l'Étoile – apart from the Champs-Élysées – is the northerly avenue de Wagram. Devotees of Art Nouveau can stop in front of no. 34 and contemplate Jules Lavirotte's design of 1904, which won best Parisian facade in 1905. Less taxing aesthetic judgements are called for in front of the flower market and cafés of place des Ternes, the first big junction on avenue de Wagram, where rue du Faubourg-St-Honoré begins, heading southeast. You can take this street and then the second left to admire the five gold onion domes of the Russian Orthodox Cathédrale Alexandre-Nevski, at 6 rue Daru, witness to Picasso's marriage to Olga Khoklova in 1918. Continuing further down rue du Faubourg-St-Honoré brings you to rue Berryer (third on the right) and the superb, classical Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild at no. 9–11, where the Centre National de la Photographie (daily except Tues noon–7pm, Mon till 9pm; www.cnp-photographie.com; €4.60; M° George-V & M° St-Philippe-du-Roule) hosts excellent temporary photographic exhibitions. The most exotic building in the area can be seen by turning left on rue de Monceau – the Chinese pagoda, on the junction with rue de Courcelles, built by C T Loo in 1926 as a private art gallery and still in the hands of the same family.

Heading north up rue de Courcelles brings you past the enormous gilded gates of the avenue Hoche entrance to Parc de Monceau (M° Monceau). The park has a roller-skating rink and kids' play facilities but otherwise it's a rather formal affair with replica antique colonnades and artificial grottoes. Half the people who command the heights of the French economy spent their infancy there, promenaded in prams by their nannies.

On avenue Vélasquez, by the east gate of Parc de Monceau, at no. 7, the Musée Cernuschi (currently closed for renovation until sometime in 2004) houses a small collection of far-eastern art, mainly ancient Chinese, bequeathed to the state by the banker Cernuschi, who nearly lost his life for giving money to the Commune. The first floor alternates between contemporary Chinese painting and temporary exhibitions, whilst the ground floor hosts the permanent collection. There are some exquisite pieces here, including a selection of ceremonial jade objects from the Shang era (1550–1050bc), and some unique ceramics detailing everyday life in ancient China, but on the whole the collection is of fairly specialized interest. Right beside the Cernuschi, with its entrance at no. 63 rue de Monceau, is the Musée Nissim de Camondo (Wed–Sun 10am–5pm; €4.60; M° Monceau & M° Villiers), named after both Count Moïse Camondo's father and his son, who was killed while flying missions for France in World War I. The count's taste for late eighteenth-century French aristocratic luxuries led him to commission this new residence in the style of the Petit Trianon at Versailles for himself and his collection. The eighteenth-century tapestries, paintings, gilded furniture, and tableware of the porcelain and solid silver variety have been impeccably assembled, with only a few of the anachronistic mod cons of an early twentieth-century aristocratic home surfacing.