North of Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Elysees
From Paris Hotels Reviews
North of the Arc de Triomphe, the 16e and 17e arrondissements are for the most part cold and soulless, their huge fortified apartments empty much of the time while their owners – royal, exiled royal, ex-royal or just extremely rich – jet between their other residences dotted about the globe. The 8e arrondissement, north of the Champs-Elysees, however, has more to offer commercially and culturally, with some of the hôtels particuliers (mansions) housing select museums – the Musee Cernuschi with its collection of Asian art, the Nissim de Camondo, a treasury of eighteenth-century decorative art, and, most magnificent of all, the Musee Jacquemart-Andre, boasting a choice collection of Italian Renaissance paintings.
The best avenue to start wandering down from place de l'Etoile – apart from the Champs-Elysees - is the northerly avenue de Wagram. Devotees of Art Nouveau can stop in front of no. 34 and contemplate Jules Lavirotte's facade of 1904, which shocked the Académie des Beaux Arts on account of its swirly lines and brightly painted ceramics (sadly rather faded now). A little further on you come to the flower market and cafés of place des Ternes, the first big junction on avenue de Wagram. From here you could make a short detour down avenue des Ternes to savour the sights and aromas of the little rue Poncelet street market, the first turning on the right. Alongside the butchers, grocers and fishmongers' stalls are some very fine food shops, such as Alléosse (13 rue Poncelet), arguably the best cheesemonger in Paris, with an impressive selection of goats' cheeses, and nearby Le Stubli, catering for sweet cravings with echt Austrian pastries.
Back at place des Ternes, you can head southeast down the rue Faubourg-St-Honoré and take the second left (rue Daru) to admire the five gold onion domes of the Russian Orthodox Cathedrale Alexandre-Nevski (open to visitors tues, Fri & Sun 3-5pm), witness to Picasso's marriage to Olga Khoklova in 1918 (they lived for a while at 29 rue de la Boétie, a few blocks southeast). Continuing down Faubourg-St-Honoré, at no. 252 you'll come to the prestigious Salle Pleyel concert hall, up and running again after a four-year refit. The most exotic building in the area can be seen by continuing on one block and turning left into rue de Monceau – the red Chinese pagoda, built for the Shanghai-born antiques dealer C.t. Loo in 1926 and now a commercial art gallery, selling fine oriental antiques (Tues-Sat-2-6pm).
Heading north up rue de Courcelles brings you to the enormous gilded gatesof the avenue Hoche entrance to Parc Monceau (M° Monceau), an informal English-style garden with undulating lawns, rock gardens, moss-grown mock-Classical columns and statues of brooding romantic French poets. Most likely half the people who command the heights of the French economy spent their infancy in this park, promenaded in prams by their nannies.
