Don't miss

Bridges of Paris
These thirty-seven bridges offer stunning views of the city seen from the river and recount thirtyseven wonderful stories of kings, battles, legends etc, to discover with the wind in your hair. Since it was built in 1604, the Pont Neuf, Paris’s oldest bridge with its 385 sculpted masks and famous half-moon-shaped turrets, has seen the entire history of Paris go by. The Pont Alexandre III, star of the 1900 Exposition Universelle, is a celebration of Franco-Russian friendship with an exuberance of sculpted nymphs and garlands, bronze candelabras and gleaming gold equestrian statuary. The Pont des Arts – the haunt of lovers – is also a favourite place to linger for dreamers and picnickers, as is the Léopold-Sédar-Senghor footbridge, which links the Musée d’Orsay to the Tuileries gardens. The city’s most recent bridge is the Simone de Beauvoir wooden footbridge, which links the weighty knowledge of the Bibliothèque Nationale library to the gardens of Bercy in a graceful, uplifting arch. That leaves thirty-two bridges: discover your favourite.


Seine riverside booksellers
For four hundred years, booksellers offering an array of great and less familiar literature have lined the embankment walls on both sides of the river, from the Pont Royal to the Pont de Sully. Each of these small green boxes offers up a marvellous assortment of rare books, original editions, engravings, postcards, illustrated journals, comic strips, novels, or intriguing odds and ends, to passers-by.





Joséphine-Baker swimming pool
Maybe you didn’t know, but floating baths were already fashionable in the 18th century. There were once several on the Seine. The Joséphine Baker swimming pool, moored on the Left Bank, reaffirms the genre in a version that is high-tech and ecologically-friendly, with all modern comforts. Facilities include a main pool and a 50 sq.m. paddling pool for children. There are also solariums, saunas, a hammam, a Jacuzzi, and a fitness and weights room.
Port de la Gare. Quai François-Mauriac (13th).M° Bibliothèque- F.-Mitterrand.
www.paris.fr