Paris for The Romantics: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

Enter by the Gambetta gate and walk downhill past Proust, Apollinaire and the shared tomb of Abélard and Héloïse, the chestnuts going gold above the lanes.

The Fraternités de Jérusalem sing the office in a gothic nave with the lights low, half an hour of plainchant for anyone who walks in.

Raquel Carena's chalkboard bistro up the hill, natural wine, offal cooked gently, and no hurry whatsoever.

A banker's hôtel kept exactly as the family left it, the copper in the kitchen included, with a gate straight onto Parc Monceau for the walk after.

Ary Scheffer's green-shuttered house with George Sand's bracelets of hair and a plaster cast of Chopin's left hand, then tea in the garden.

Art nouveau glass and Mucha-style peacocks from 1906, Sarah Bernhardt's table by the window, and a menu that still costs what a bouillon should.

The Gates of Hell among the roses, The Kiss inside, and the room given over to Camille Claudel's small, fierce bronzes; the garden ticket alone is worth it.

The painter's last studio off the quietest square in Saint-Germain, with the garden he planted to be able to work without going out.

Private salons where courtesans tested diamonds on the mirrors, the scratches still there; book a salon and the river is yours.

Sartre and Beauvoir share one stone, kissed with lipstick; Gainsbourg's is covered in metro tickets, and the chestnut alleys are quiet at ten.

Hugo, Zola and Dumas in the vaults, and Foucault's pendulum swinging above in the nave.

A 1901 gilded brasserie above the platforms, built for departures, where you can eat a leg of lamb and watch the board.