Product Description
"Combines the beauty of a coffee-table tome with the hard facts and compact size of a traditional guidebook." -- Vogue
A city of incomparable beauty, culture and history, Paris has enchanted writers from Balzac to Hemingway and artists from Monet to Picasso. Paris is the place travelers return to year after year -- to revisit favorite cafes, museums, parks and palaces, to take in the art and architecture, fragrance and couture, music and cuisine. Discover the "city of lights."
Sample the sights and sounds of Paris, from the gloriously restored Marais district to historic Left Bank streets with their irresistible antique shops. Visit the places you have always heard about: the Pantheon, burial site of Voltaire, Hugo and Rousseau; Notre-Dame, masterpiece of Gothic architecture and haunt of the fictional Quasimoto; the Paris Opera, with its glittering chandeliers and resplendent ceiling painted by Chagall. Go underground and explore the famous catacombs or venture out to the celebrated sites nearby, including Versailles, Vaux-le-Viocomte and Chantilly. Discover the romance of Paris with detailed itineraries to guide you through one of Europe's most beloved cities.
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Knopf Guide: Paris (Knopf City Guides)
- Paperback: 529 pages (2007-05-15)
- Publisher: Knopf; 2007-05-15
- Label: Knopf
- Studio: Knopf
- ISBN: 0375711082
- Average Customer Review:
 based on 10 reviews
- Sales Rank in Books: #614248
Avg. Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Overview of Paris for the Tourist or the Enthusiast 2008-02-03
Comment: Easily one of the best Paris guide books on the market, Knopf's City Guide of Paris is a visual and textual delight. Suitable for those trying to plan a first visit as well as for the repeat visitor, the book is a cornucopia of artistic and photographic montages of most all of the major sights to be seen in the city. The treatment which the book provides is so extensive that many people do not exclusively use the book for only tourist visits: the volume also excellently permits us to vicariously revisit the city from home, as well as conduct informal research on the many aspects of Paris' history and culture. As a tourist guide, the book can therefore help you make decisions on what you wish to concentrate on during a vacation visit, but as a resource guide, the text can help you develop knowledge about all kinds of aspects of the city (history, cuisine, art and architecture, etc.). It is truly a lovely book to enjoy both inside and outside the city.
Some side comments are in order. For example, the book has been kept reasonably small so it can fulfill its purpose as a tourist guide. This means, however, that the page size is not the most convenient format for holding and reading the book for any length of time, and yet the beauty and written information in the volume compels us to do just that. This means we are sometimes locked into a small battle trying to open the book to ever greater degrees to make the page overlays more visible during longer reading sessions. And because the book is printed exclusively on high-quality gloss paper - a true delight in most any book - the volume feels like it weighs a metric ton. Why does that matter, you might ask? With airlines seemingly ever reducing and scrutinizing baggage weight limits, this single book is going to add a pound or two to either your checked baggage or your carry-on bag. When you are worried about reaching your baggage weight limits, this factor becomes a real issue. Nevertheless, I can tell you the book is so well done that I've brought it with me multiple times on trips to Paris due to the great information and illustrations it provides.
My own suggestion is that you couple this book with a good map of the city (which is sometimes best purchased while in Paris itself), and you have a great start to understanding the city. Another great addition to this book is one of the "walking guides" for the city (Tessan's City Walks: Paris: 50 Adventures on Foot is excellent). With these few books, you have more than enough to have a great visit to the City of Lights. Bon voyage!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great guide for galleries 2007-06-07
Comment: Very useful guide, especially for galleries and places of interest. Didn't use it for housing and not much for food.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: KNOPF GUIDE TO PARIS 2007-01-21
Comment: I love these Knopf guides, they are really beautiful little books and they are chocked full of information, granted they are not a quick guide, but if want indepth information and some deep research on Paris, then I highly recommend this guide, read it before you go to Paris, it will make the trip all the more enjoyable. Bon Voyage.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Like Going There Again-Superb 2005-07-09
Comment: In 1987 I visited paris for the first time. When I purchased this guide it was like going there many times over. It is truely one of the best books I have ever purchased. It is an art guide, history book, architecture study, travel guide and more.
What more could there be? This is an excellent reference all around. Its easy to research a novel from this tome alone. I felt that I stepped off a plane and had an excellent english speaking tour guide with me.
I naturally proceeded to get the rest of the set of travel guides. It was better than all the encyclopedias I had in school. The benefit of this series is that unless the world changes dramatically, the travel guides will not go out of style of years to come.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is the sigle best general Paris guidbook available 2003-01-21
Comment: No I do not work for the publisher, but as someone who will spend 4 months planning 14 days away. I must say if I could bring only one book, this would be it. I have used it on every trip to Paris, and have not been led wrong by it. The book touches upon almost every conceivable church, museum, square, fountain, etc. that is within the City proper. If you were to study this book for 2 weeks with a larger Michelin map of the City,(one that is entirely on one looseleaf page, you could put the book down and completely navigate around the City on your own and find everything. Yes it is that good and well thought out. The ultimate writers of the guidebook deserve 'props' for how they did the book. I like the Knopf guides in general, but this one is the best.Some caveats: 1. The hotel and restaraunt section IN THIS BOOK, in the back is too short and dated. The first and only time I booked a hotel in the back of a Knopf guidebook was in Venice and I GOT BURNED BAD! Unless you are talking about something world renown, like the Crillon, or the Cipriani in Venice, use another guidebook! For Paris, Cheap Sleeps/Cheap Eats has never done me wrong. In fact they have been uncommonly good. 2. There are a lot of tricks for getting around the City, getting into museums, etc. You won't find them in this book, you are going to have to go to Rick Steves for that! 3. The guidebook cant tell you what is best to see in this City, although it is not the Knopf guidebooks fault. It is the fault of the City of Paris. There is so much in that City, if you step off the plane and honestly look around, your head will spin, and perhaps you will start a lifelong love affair with it, as probably millions of others have. I don't think I have ever been happier, or more content, then sitting around drinking wine and eating frites somewhere in the Latin Quarter. Enjoy yourself and relax, the way the U.S. and the world is going, you may not get back there for a long long time.
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Knopf Guide: Paris (Knopf City Guides)
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