Romantic Destinations - Paris, France

Paris is almost a cliche as a romantic destination. The concept of Paris in the spring as a time for lovers being maintained in many films (not least Bogart in Casablanca). Like many easy attributions - it has a great deal of truth. In spring the city's parks are in bloom, the air warm, the cafes have moved outside, it would indeed be a stern soul who did not feel romantic. Having said that, don't ignore the romance of winter - when the city is misty, windows are hard to see through, and romance can be maintained by the fires in cafes and bistros across the city. During the war, Simone de Beauvoire chose her cafes (and lovers) according to heat of the stove.

In fact Paris probably is seen as a romantic city as much through the various love affairs conducted by its more famous inhabitants than any other reason. Napoleon and Josephine, his nephew and Eugene, Louis XVI and the doomed Marie Antoinette, de Beauvoire and Sartre to name but a few.

As with many European cities, Paris is organized around its river (the Seine). The traditional character of the city's districts are defined by their location to the Seine. Traditionally the left bank (home to the Sorbonne) was the city's radical, edgy, avant-guarde district as opposed to the stuffy middle class right bank. Less true now when so many artists have made their homes in the Marais, Bellevue and Le Sentier. But then cliches do not have to be true.

The many bridges over the Seine are another key to Paris' romantic tradition. Scenes of meeting and departure, captured in many films as varied as Les Amants de Pont Neuf (the lovers of bridge nine - sounds better in the original French) to Angela, the bridges are as much the focus of the film as the lovers.

For lovers of baroque romance, little beats Notre Dame. Even if you do not believe in love haunted hunchbacks it remains an awesome place. Paris' opera house of course, too, has its famous love lost lover - the (in)famous Phantom. For those looking for more modern takes on romance, visit Montmartre, once home of the notorious Moulin Rouge, or, more contemporary, the café where Amelie was filmed.

Whilst in Montmartre do not fail to visit the Sacre Couer, a lovely building but contentious in its time - it was built to appeal to God to forgive France's sins that had led to the loss of the war with Prussia in 1870. And it was completed just in time for the infamously libertine 1890s to burst into full life in the streets immediately below the church.