Observations From Paris
How Paris became one of the world’s most beautiful cities, and what we we can learn from it
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Paris is, perhaps, the most beautiful city in the world. This might seem almost too obvious to write given how widely acknowledged and thoroughly documented its beauty is. On one hand, that’s fair. It’s a magnificent city that enjoys near unanimous admiration from around the globe. More than 44 million people visited Paris in 2022, with nearly 20 million of those tourists coming from outside of France. Depending on what data you look at, this would be good for the 3rd or 4th most visited city in the world by international tourists. For those who aren’t able to make the journey to Paris, images of the city are seared into the minds of most people from an early age, serving as the de facto model of what a wonderful city should look like. Its bistros, baked goods, and culture have been exported world wide.
But you’ll have to excuse my writing out the obvious, and walking down already well trodden paths to explain the beauty of Paris, as I believe it extends far beyond what we’ve been told of it, or shown. I’d like to argue that Paris isn’t properly appreciated for all that it is, and I doubt that it ever could be. You might say this is just excitement talking, and that’s partly true — I’m still glowing from my recent quick trip to the city of light. But it goes beyond excitement. Much of what people associate with the city are its monuments. The Louvre might just be my favorite, but Notre-Dame de Paris, Luxembourg Palace, The Pantheon, Musee D’Orsay, The Palace of Versailles, Les Invalides, Palais Garnier, Sacré-Cœur, The Eiffel Tower, Hôtel de Ville, Petit Palais, Place Vendôme, La Bourse de Commerce, La Porte Saint Martin, Grand Palais, Gare du Nord, and the Arc de Triomphe are all sublime. The many hundreds of other prominent structures I don’t have the space to name are likewise outstanding. The wealth of quality architecture alone would be difficult to fully appreciate, to say nothing of the cultural and historical riches contained within many of these buildings.
