Paris Guide
Western Paris
Western Paris consists of the well-manicured 16e and 17e arrondissements, often referred to as the Beaux Quartiers. The 16e is aristocratic and rich; the 17e, or at least the southern part of it, bourgeois and rich, embodying the staid, cautious values of the nineteenth-century manufacturing and trading classes. The area is mainly residential with few specific sights as such, the chief exception being the Musée Marmottan, known for its impressive collection of Monets. The northern half of the 16e, towards place Victor-Hugo and place de l'Etoile, is leafy though still distinctly metropolitan in feel. The southern part, around the old villages of Auteuil and Passy, is particularly pleasant for strolling. It has an almost provincial air, with its tight knot of streets and charming villas – leafy lanes of attractive old houses, fronted with English-style gardens, full of roses, ivy and wisteria. Although they're often closed off to non-residents, should you find the access gate open, no-one seems to mind if you wander in. Auteuil and Passy were only incorporated into the city in 1860, and soon became the capital's most desirable districts. Well-to-do Parisians commissioned new houses here, and as a result, the area is rich in fine examples of early twentieth-century architecture: Hector Guimard, designer of the swirly green Art Nouveau métro stations, worked here, and there are some rare Parisian examples of work by interwar architects Le Corbusier and Mallet-Stevens, who created the first "Cubist" buildings.