Western Paris
France > Paris > West
Western Paris consists of the well-manicured 16e and 17e arrondissements, often referred to as the Beaux Quartiers. The 16e is aristocratic and rich; the 17e, or at least the southern part of it, bourgeois and rich, embodying the staid, cautious values of the nineteenth-century manufacturing and trading classes. The area is mainly residential with few specific sights as such, the chief exception being the Musée Marmottan, known for its impressive collection of Monets. The northern half of the 16e, towards place Victor-Hugo and place de l'Étoile, is leafy though still distinctly metropolitan in feel. The southern part, round the old villages of Auteuil and Passy is particularly pleasant for strolling. It has an almost provincial air, with its tight knot of streets and charming villas – leafy lanes of attractive old houses, fronted with English-style gardens, full of roses, ivy and wisteria. Although they're often closed off to non-residents, should you find the access gate open, no one seems to mind if you wander in. Owing to the relatively late incorporation of the villages into the city in 1860 and amenability to new construction, the 16e boasts a number of interesting examples of turn-of-the-century and early twentieth-century architecture, notably pieces by Hector Guimard, designer of the swirly green Art Nouveau métro stations, and Le Corbusier and Mallet-Stevens, architects of the first "Cubist" buildings.
Pages in section ‘West’: Auteuil, West of Auteuil, Passy, Bois de Boulogne, La Défense, Île de la Jatte.
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