Orientation

Visitor Information

The Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau (tel. 08-92-68-30-00; 0.35€/45¢ per minute; www.paris-info.com) has offices throughout the city, with the main headquarters at 25-27 rue des Pyramides, 1er (Métro: Pyramides). It's open Monday to Saturday 10am to 7pm, Sunday and holidays from 11am to 7pm. Less comprehensive branch offices include Opéra-Grands Magasins, 11 rue Scribe, 9e (Métro: Opera), open Monday to Saturday 9am to 6:30pm; Espace Tourisme Ile-de-France, in the Carrousel du Louvre, 99 rue de Rivoli, 1er (Métro: Palais-Royal-Louvre), open daily 10am to 7pm; in the Gare de Lyon, 20 bd. Diderot, Paris 12e (Métro: Gare de Lyon), open Monday to Saturday 8am to 6pm; in the Gare du Nord, 18 rue de Dunkerque, 10e (Métro: Gare du Nord), open daily 8am to 6pm; and in Montmartre, 21 place du Tertre, 18e (Métro: Abbesses or Lamarck-Caulaincourt), open daily 10am to 7pm. You can walk in at any branch to make a hotel reservation; the service charge is free for hostels and between 2€ to 6€ ($2.60-$7.80) for hotels, depending on their category and price range. The offices are extremely busy year-round, especially in midsummer, so be prepared to wait in line.

Country & City Telephone Codes -- The country code for France is 33. The city code for Paris (as well as for all cities in the Ile de France region) is 1; use this code if you're calling from outside France. If you're calling Paris from within Paris or from anywhere else in France, use 01, which is now built into all phone numbers in the Ile de France, making them 10 digits long.

City Layout

Paris is surprisingly compact. Occupying 105 sq. km (41 sq. miles), it's home to more than 2.15 million people. The city is divided into 20 municipal wards called arrondissements, each with its own mayor, city hall, police station, and central post office. Some even have remnants of market squares.

The river Seine divides Paris into the Rive Droite (Right Bank) to the north and the Rive Gauche (Left Bank) to the south. These designations make sense when you stand on a bridge and face downstream; watching the water flow out toward the sea, to your right is the north bank, to your left, the south. Thirty-two bridges link the banks of the Seine, some providing access to the two small islands at the heart of the city, Ile de la Cité, the city's birthplace and site of Notre-Dame, and Ile St-Louis, a moat-guarded oasis of sober 17th-century mansions. These islands can cause some confusion to walkers who think they've just crossed a bridge from one bank to the other, only to find themselves caught up in an almost medieval maze of narrow streets and old buildings.

The "main street" on the Right Bank is the Champs-Elysées, beginning at the Arc de Triomphe and running to place de la Concorde. Haussmann also created avenue de l'Opéra (as well as the Opéra) and the 12 avenues that radiate starlike from the Arc de Triomphe, giving it its original name, place de l'Etoile (the star); it was renamed place Charles de Gaulle following the general's death and is often referred to as place Charles de Gaulle-Etoile.

Finding an Address

The key to finding any address in Paris is looking for the arrondissement number, rendered either as a number followed by "e" (2e, 3e, and so on) or more formally as part of the postal code (the last two digits indicate the arrondissement -- 75007 indicates the 7th Arrondissement, 75017 the 17th). Numbers on buildings running parallel to the Seine usually follow the course of the river -- east to west. On north-south streets, numbering begins at the river.

If you're staying more than 2 or 3 days, buy one of the inexpensive little books that include the plan de Paris by arrondissement, available at all major newsstands and bookshops. If you can find it, the forest-green "Paris Classique l'Indispensable" is a thorough, well-indexed, and accurate guide to the city and its suburbs. Most map guides provide you with a Métro map, a foldout map of the city, and indexed maps of each arrondissement, with all streets listed and keyed.