For those who had known the couple in the time of their rapture, her absence from his funeral at the Church of the Madeleine on October 30, 1849, felt more like a haunting presence.

Beauty is in the streets,” they say in Paris. We travelers know our favorites, Parisians know theirs. Jean Genet liked to stand with his friend Giacometti at the foot of rue Oberkampf, taking in its long uphill from the Marais to Belleville. Simone Weil loved walking the quays of Île Saint-Louis in her native river city. The scruffy streets of the ninth were François Truffaut’s muse and mother.As cities evolve and erupt, streets change; Parisians come and go. But the beauty remains.

Look inside the green heart of Paris and you will see the exquisite beauty of one of the world’s most cherished places. That beauty quickens the love of life and stirs our desire for more. People—travelers—always want to come back to Paris again and again.

As the Anglo-French historian and indefatigable walker Richard Cobb put it, “Paris should be both walkable and walked, if the limitless variety, the unexpectedness, the provincialism, the rusticity, the touching eccen-tricity are to be appreciated.” With The Streets of Paris as your guide, you’ll walk the quartiers of such original geniuses as Patrick Modiano, Édith Piaf, Colette, Jean Moulin, good king Henri IV—you’ll find all these names in the book’s Contents.