Paris Discovered

Name: Paris Discovered
Address: Paris, 75015, FR
Telephone: 06 52 38 07 45

Page d'Accueil
France
Paris
Paris Discovered

The FIRST complete relocation guide to moving to Paris. We offer private chauffeured transportation for arrivals, departures and excursions outside of Paris.

Since 2002, Holidays France Rentals has striven to provide the highest quality in short-term luxury apartment and home rentals in Paris, Spain, Italy, and the French countryside. After over a decade in the rental business, the HFR Team has cultivated insight and experience that make us leaders within our industry. We can provide tours of the city that can be customized according to the specific in

terests of our clients. We are here to ensure that your time meets and exceeds all expectations. Our staff is flexible, accommodating and attentive, and can be on your doorstep whenever you need us. Our rates are all inclusive and we accept AMEX, Visa, MC, Discover, PayPal and Wire Transfers.

16/06/2026

May in Paris means tarte aux fraises.

Every patisserie window transforms. The croissants stay, the pain au chocolat stays, but suddenly there are trays of tarte aux fraises — whole strawberries set upright in crème pâtissière, on a perfectly baked short crust, powdered sugar if the baker's in a generous mood.

It's one of those things that French pastry does without calling attention to itself. No seasonal marketing campaign. No limited edition anything. Just: the strawberries are good right now, so here is the tart.

**Local tip:** The French strawberry you want is the Gariguette — a long, pointed variety with an intense flavor that bears no resemblance to the large tasteless ones sold in supermarkets year-round. It shows up at the market in late April and is gone by July. If a patisserie is using real Gariguettes, you'll taste the difference immediately.

15/06/2026

Square Boucicaut, 7th arrondissement, across the street from Le Bon Marché.

The square is named for Aristide Boucicaut, who founded Le Bon Marché in 1852 — widely considered the world's first department store in the modern sense. His wife Marguerite donated the square to the city. It has been a neighborhood garden since 1874.

The Araucaria araucana — monkey puzzle tree — is the striking angular specimen here. Native to the Andes, it was fashionable in Victorian and Second Empire gardens for its geometric silhouette and prehistoric appearance. Several survive in the older Paris squares. They grow slowly and live for centuries.

**Local tip:** Le Bon Marché next door has a food hall — La Grande Épicerie — that is worth visiting even if you have no intention of spending anything. The cheese and charcuterie counters are exceptional. The produce section is where Parisian home cooks in the 7th actually shop for good ingredients. Entrance is free; willpower is your own problem.

14/06/2026

Late afternoon on the Seine. The city has relocated to the water.

Paris riverside culture grew significantly after the city began closing quais to traffic seasonally in the 2000s and permanently on some stretches after 2016. Where there were cars, there are now people — on the quais, on the berges, on the floating bars and guinguettes that appear each spring and close each October.

The scene here is typical: pallet furniture, casual drinks, no agenda. A barge sits on the water behind. Haussmannian facades catch the late sun. Everyone is in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment, which is the Paris summer thing — it doesn't feel like it was planned because it wasn't.

**Local tip:** Paris Plages, the annual pop-up beach program, transforms the quais along the Right Bank into sandy beaches with deck chairs, water activities, and outdoor events from mid-July through mid-August. Free and always more pleasant than it sounds. The Bassin de la Villette version (19th arrondissement) has a floating swimming pool — genuinely worth the detour.

13/06/2026

Inside the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, Montmartre, 18th arrondissement.

Sacré-Cœur is one of the most photographed buildings in Paris, almost always from the outside. The interior is less discussed — vaulted stone, a large ceiling mosaic of Christ in gold, the persistent smell of candle wax.

This display sits to the side. A scale model of the basilica, built in meticulous detail, lit from within. The dome, the turrets, the portico, the miniature figures at the base indicating scale. Most visitors are looking at the ceiling by the time they reach this point and walk straight past it.

Sacré-Cœur was built between 1875 and 1914 as a national act of penance following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. The site was chosen specifically for its visibility — the highest natural point in Paris. Construction was funded entirely through voluntary contributions from across France.

**Local tip:** Entry to the basilica is free. The dome costs extra to climb (and involves stairs), but the ground floor and crypt are open without charge. Skip the dome if the weather is poor — the view from the esplanade below is frankly better and involves no spiral staircase.

12/06/2026

306 Rue Saint-Martin, 3rd arrondissement, Arts-et-Métiers neighborhood.

The green face is a mascaron — a decorative carved or cast face, a tradition in French architecture going back centuries. This one is bronze, mounted on the building facade like it's been watching the street since the 18th century. At some point it may have been a functional fountain head. Now it's just watching.

Above it, a contemporary ceramic portrait: a woman's face in blue and white tilework, painted in a style that nods to Portuguese azulejos but is distinctly modern. These portrait tiles have been appearing on Paris walls quietly for years — placed by artists, sometimes with permission, sometimes without. They become part of the wall almost immediately.

**Local tip:** Rue Saint-Martin is one of the oldest streets in Paris, following the path of the ancient Roman road that once ran north from Lutetia. Walk it slowly from the Seine to République and you'll find more of these unexpected details every few blocks — building plaques, carved keystones, ironwork, and the occasional face watching from somewhere it shouldn't be.

11/06/2026

The poissonnerie — the French fish shop — operates on a different logic than the refrigerated fish section of a supermarket.

The fish are whole, laid flat on crushed ice, visible from the door. You can see the clarity of the eyes, the brightness of the skin, the stiffness of the body — all reliable indicators of freshness that disappear the moment a fish is filleted and wrapped. The handwritten price tags are in euros per kilo. You tell the fishmonger what you want, how many, and how you'd like it prepared: whole, gutted, scaled, filleted, or cut into steaks.

This counter shows mackerel (maquereau), rouget (red mullet), sole, dorade (sea bream), and what looks like a turbot in the center. All labeled, all priced, all caught recently enough to be here.

**Local tip:** Fresh fish in Paris is generally better and cheaper on Friday mornings, when the weekly delivery cycle peaks before the weekend. The best covered markets for fish — Marché d'Aligre, Marché Saint-Quentin, Marché Beauvau — get their best stock Thursday to Friday. Ask the fishmonger what came in that morning. They'll tell you.

10/06/2026

Place Saint-Ferdinand, Quartier des Ternes, 17th arrondissement.

This is the kind of Paris that doesn't make the shortlist. The 17th sits in the northwest of the city — not as chic as the 16th to the south, not as buzzy as the 18th to the east. The Ternes quarter is comfortable, residential, organized around the Place des Ternes market. Place Saint-Ferdinand is a small square nearby with this fountain at its center.

The fountain is classic 19th-century civic infrastructure: tiered basin, sculpted figures, the whole vocabulary of public space that Haussmann deployed across the city to make the new Paris feel inhabited. Most of these fountains still work. Most Parisians walk past them without looking up.

**Local tip:** The covered market at Place des Ternes (a few blocks north) is one of the better indoor markets in Paris — open Tuesday through Sunday, with strong fish, cheese, and charcuterie counters. Far less crowded than the Marché d'Aligre. The neighborhood bakes to it.

09/06/2026

Place Dauphine, Île de la Cité, 1st arrondissement.

Henri IV began this square in 1607 — at the same time he was finishing the Pont Neuf — as one of Paris's first planned residential ensembles. The brief was precise: uniform facades, brick and stone, arcaded ground floors for shops. The original triangular plan survives almost intact, minus one side destroyed during the 19th-century expansion of the Palais de Justice.

To enter, you walk under an archway from Pont Neuf or squeeze through the narrow passage at the tip. The square is enclosed enough that the street noise drops immediately. There are two restaurants, a handful of trees, and benches. On summer afternoons, residents play pétanque in the center gravel.

**Local tip:** Place Dauphine is one of the few squares in central Paris where you can sit for an hour and not feel like you're in the middle of a tourist circuit. The café on the right side as you enter (looking toward the Palais de Justice) has a terrace that faces the square's interior rather than the street. Quiet, shaded, and operating at a pace that predates TripAdvisor.

09/06/2026

Watermark the documents you send in your rental dossier ! …especially, if someone is asking for a dossier prior to scheduling a visit. A watermark helps against identity theft. France is amazing. Knowing this, they created a site to let you add a watermark to the docs you send to agencies. 🫶🇫🇷

08/06/2026

Petit Palais, Avenue Charles Girault, 8th arrondissement. Built for the 1900 World's Fair alongside its more famous neighbor across the street.

The permanent collection here spans Greek and Roman antiquities, medieval objects, Dutch masters, and a large holding of 19th-century French painting and sculpture. It's a serious collection and entry is free — one of the better-kept secrets on the Champs-Élysées axis, where everything else costs something.

But the architecture is the reason to come. The interior garden is a small cloister hidden in the center of the building. The gallery you see here runs along the garden's edge — vaulted arches, painted ceilings, marble floors that reflect the light from the tall windows. It was designed by Charles Girault and every detail was meant to impress. It still does.

**Local tip:** The Petit Palais café opens onto the interior garden and is one of the calmer lunch spots in the 8th — shaded in summer, protected in winter, and accessible without a museum ticket. You can eat lunch in a 19th-century courtyard without paying admission. Worth knowing.

Adresse

Paris
75015

Téléphone

06 52 38 07 45

Site Web

https://www.parisdiscovered.com/

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