For many years, this quartier seemed to sink lower and lower into poverty and decay, overcrowded by working-class immigrants from the far reaches of the former French Empire. The opening of the Opéra Bastille, however, has given the 11th new hope and new life. The facility, called the "people's opera house," stands on the landmark place de la Bastille, where on July 14, 1789, 633 Parisians stormed the fortress and seized the ammunition depot, as the French Revolution swept across the city. Over the years, the prison held Voltaire, the Marquis de Sade, and the mysterious "Man in the Iron Mask."
Even when the district wasn't fashionable, visitors flocked to Bofinger, at 5-7 rue de la Bastille, to sample its Alsatian choucroute. (Technically, Bofinger lies in the 4th arrondissement, although its fans have always associated it with the place de la Bastille.) Established around 1864, it is perhaps the most famous brasserie in Paris. The 11th has its charms, but they need to be sought out; Le Marché at place d'Aligre, for example, is surrounded by a Middle Eastern food market and is a good place to hunt for secondhand bargains: everything is cheap, and although you must search hard for treasures, they often appear.

The 12th's major attraction remains the Bois de Vincinnes, a sprawling park on the eastern periphery of Paris. It's been a longtime favorite of French families who enjoy its zoos and museums, its royal chateau and boating lakes, and most definitely, the Parc Floral de Paris, a celebrated flower garden whose springtime rhododendrons and autumn dahlias are among the major lures of the city. The dreary Gare de Lyon also lies in the 12th. This district, once a depressing urban wasteland, has been singled out for a multimillion-dollar resuscitation, and will soon sport new housing, shops, gardens, and restaurants. Many of these new structures will occupy the site of the former Reuilly railroad tracks.

Centered around the grimy Gare d'Austerlitz, the 13th might have its devotees, but we've yet to meet one. British snobs who flitted in and out of the train station were among the first of the district's foreign visitors, and then in essence wrote the 13th off as a dreary working class district reminiscent of London's East End. Certainly there are far more fashionable places to see, but there is at least on reason to visit the 13th: the Manufacture des Gobelins at 42 avenue des Gobelins, the tapestry factory that made the work "Gobelins" internationally famous. Some 250 Flemish weavers, under the reign of Louis XIV, launched the industry to compete with the tapestries being produced in southern Belgium (Flanders), and in time they became the preferred suppliers of the French aristocracy. Many of the walls of the Sun King's palace at Versailles were covered with Gobelins.

The northern end of this large arrondissement is devoted to Montparnasse, home of the "lost generation," and former stomping ground of Stein, Toklas, Hemingway, and other American expatriates who gathered here in the 1920's. After World War II, it ceased to be the center of intellectual life in Paris, but the memory still lingers on in its cafés. One of its most visible monuments, one that helps set the tone of the neighborhood, is the Rodin statue of Balzac at the junction of boulevard Montparnasse and boulevard Raspail. At this corner are some of the world's most famous literary cafés, including La Rotunde, Le Select, La Dome, and La Coupole. Though Gertrude Stein probably avoided this corner (she loathed cafés), all the other American expatriates, including Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald, had no qualms about enjoying a drink here (or quite a few of them, for that matter). Henry Miller, plotting Tropic of Cancer and his newest seduction of Anais Nin, came to La Coupole for his morning porridge. So did Roman Polanski, Josephine Baker (with a lion cub on a leash), James Joyce, Man Ray, Matisse, Ionesco (ordering café liègeois), Jean-Paul Sartre, and even the famous Kiki as she worked on her memoirs. Though she shunned the cafés, Stein amused herself at home (27 rue de Fleurus) with Alice Toklas, collecting paintings, including those of Picasso, and entertaining the likes of Max Jacob, Apollinaire, T.S. Eliot, and Matisse. At its southern end, the 14th arrondissement contains pleasant residential neighborhoods filled with well-designed apartment buildings, many of them built between 1910 and 1940.

A mostly residential district beginning at the Gare Montparnasse, the 15th stretches all the way to the Seine. In size and population, it's the largest quartier of Paris, but it attracts few tourists and has few attractions, except for the Parc des Expositions and the Institut Pasteur. In the early 20th century, many artists-Chagall, Léger, and Modigliani-lived in this arrondissement in a shared atelier known as "The Beehive."

Originally the village of Passy, where Benjamin Franklin lived during most of his time in Paris, this district is still reminiscent of Proust's world. Highlights include the Bois de Boulogne; the Jardin du Trocadéro; the Musée de Balzac; the Musée Guimet (famous for its Asian collections); and the Cimetière de Passy, resting place of Manet, Talleyrand, Giraudoux, and Debussy. One of the largest of the city's arrondissements, it's known today for its well-heeled bourgeoisie, its upscale rents, and some rather posh (and according to its critics, rather smug) residential boulevards. Prosperous and suitably conservative addresses include the avenue d'Iéna and hte avenue Victor Hugo. Also prestigious is the avenue Foch, the widest boulevard in Paris, with homes that at various periods were maintained by Onassis, the shah of Iran, the composer Charles Debussy, and Prince Rainier of Monaco. The arrondissement also includes what some visitors consider the best place in Paris from which to view the Eiffel Tower, the place du Trocadéro.

Flanking the northern periphery of Paris, the 17th incorporates neighborhoods of conservative bourgeois respectability (in its western end) and less affluent, more pedestrian neighborhoods in its eastern end. Regardless of its levels of prosperity, most of the arrondissement is residential, and most of it, at least to habitués of glamour and glitter, is rather dull. Highlights include the Palais de Congrès, which is of interest only if you're attending a convention or special exhibit, and the Porte Maillot Air Terminal, no grand distinction.

The 18th is the most famous outer quartier of Paris, containing Montmartre, the Moulin Rouge, the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur, and the place du Tertre. Utrillo was its native son, Renoir lived here, and Toulouse-Lautrec adopted the area as his own. Picasso painted some of his most famous works at the Bateau-Lavoir (Boat Washouse) on place Emile-Goudeau. Max Jacob, Matisse, adn Braque were all frequent visitors. Today, place Blanche is known for its prostitutes, and Montmartre is filled with honcky-tonks, too many souvenir shops, and terrible restaurants. Go for the attractions and the mémoires. The city's most famous flea market, Maché aux Puces de Clignancourt, is another landmark.

Today, visitors come to what was once the village of La Villette to see the angular, much-publicized Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, a spectacular science museum and park built on a site that for years was devoted to the city's slaughterhouses. Mostly residential, and not at all upscale, the district is one fo the most ethnically diverse in Paris, the home of people from all parts of the former French Empire. A highlight is Les Buttes-Chaumont, a park where kids can enjoy puppet shows and donkey rides. The park it filled with waterfalls and rocky caves.

The 20th's greatest landmark is Père-Lachaise Cemetery, the resting place of Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt, Gertrude Stein, Colette, and many, many others. Otherwise, the 20th arrondissement is a dreary and sometimes volatile melting por comprising residents from France's former colonies. Although nostalgia buffs sometimes head here to visit Piaf's former neighborhood, Ménilmontant-Belleville, it has been almost totally bulldozed and rebuilt since the bad old days when she grew up there. Parts of the 20th won't correspond to your vision of the ledgendary Paris of yesteryear in any way: the district contains many Muslims (the turbaned man selling dates and grains on the street presents a scene directly out of northern Africa), and hundreds of deeply entrenched members of Paris's Jewish community, many of whom fled their former homes in ALgeria or Tunisia, fearing for their safety. Grimy, and shunned by many residents of more upscale Paris neighborhoods, sometimes there's a palpable sense of discontent here, but the 20th provides an interesting cultural contrast to some of Paris's other quartiers.