Calm, charm and creativity in Parisian enclave

It may well be the most visited city in the most visited country in the world, but you could never accuse Paris of overflowing with tourists.

OK, c’est vrai (it’s true), that’s a dubious argument if you’re talking about the areas close to the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and other crowd-pulling landmarks. But in large swathes of the French capital, you’ll find yourself heavily outnumbered by Parisians.

Sometimes you’ll even have whole streets and boulevards more or less to yourself.

After pausing to admire Gustave Eiffel’s headturner rising on the other side of the River Seine, I veer away from the waterfront and go wandering in Paris’ 16th arrondissement.

Widely referred to as “le seizieme” (the 16th) in French, it’s the city’s westernmost district and the largest of all, although more than half is eaten up by the Bois de Boulogne, a gigantic park on former royal hunting grounds. The rest is built up and peppered with elegant apartments, embassies, galleries, squares and other features that make Paris such a delightfully walkable city.

It’s also sprinkled with three, four and five-star hotels that could, potentially, be your base on a future visit to the city.

Like all arrondissements, “le seizieme” is subdivided into smaller areas, including one-time villages that were absorbed into Paris’ web in the 1860s and became increasingly urbanised.

I visited one, Passy, on a previous trip, lured there by Maison de Balzac, a museum about that great chronicler of French life, Honore de Balzac, in his former home. Today I’m casually exploring Passy’s southern neighbour, Auteuil, which has its own intriguing literary past. Novelist Marcel Proust, author of A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu (Remembrance Of Things Past), was born here in 1871, while another feted writer, Victor Hugo, lived for a time in Auteuil (there’s an avenue and square named after him in the northern half of the 16th). In The Count Of Monte Cristo, a novel by Alexandre Dumas, the main (fictional) character, Edmond Dantes, purchases a country residence in Auteuil.

Other notable French creatives resided locally. Famed for his flamboyant signs and entrances for the Paris Metro, Hector Guimard built a house and studio in his trademark art nouveau style at 122 Avenue Mozart, one of Auteuil’s main thoroughfares. He and his American painter wife, Adeline Oppenheim Guimard, lived and worked there.

The building was later converted into flats, with its fittings ending up in museums across France and in New York. Another influential 20th century architect, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, has a connection with Auteuil. Born in Switzerland, he moved to Paris near the end of World War I to set up an architectural practice with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret.

Two of the early villas they designed, built with reinforced concrete, are tucked off a square in Auteuil near the Jasmin Metro station. Called Maisons La Roche et Jeanneret, they house Fondation Le Corbusier, which displays the architect’s original drawings, plans and paintings. It’s open for visits every day except Sundays and offers daily guided tours in French (and in English on Tuesdays).

This is one of 17 Le Corbusier-created gems, spread across seven countries, that form a collective UNESCO World Heritage site. There’s another in Auteuil’s neighbouring town of Boulogne, where the Jeanneret cousins designed the so-called Molitor building in the early 1930s. Spanning eight storeys, it’s claimed to be the first residential building in the world with a glass facade, with Le Corbusier’s apartment and studio occupying the top two floors.

Managed by the Fondation Le Corbusier, it welcomes visitors from Thursday to Saturday. While it’s exciting to follow in the footsteps of creative minds of yesteryear, the joy of places like Auteuil is mostly found, not in ticking off sights, but in simply strolling and soaking up the surroundings.

You’re never far from a leafy lane, a bistro with an inviting terrace spilling onto a tree-shaded square, a corner boulangerie emitting fabulous aromas or a florist with vivid colours and scents. French conversations and welcomes — “Bonjour. Ca va?” — catch your ear as old friends meet and greet one another in the street.

Bygone shopfronts draw you closer, as do real estate windows advertising enviable properties with eye-popping price tags.

Sometimes, something random — a blast of hot air from the open door of a laundrette — feels strangely life-affirming. So too does seeing an impressive landmark for the first time. Auteuil has its own Notre-Dame, completed in 1892, although with its Romano-Byzantine style, it looks less like the iconic Gothic cathedral in central Paris and more like a certain basilica in Montmartre. It’s no shock to hear it’s been nicknamed “the small-time cousin of the Sacre-Coeur”.

Across the street from the Eglise d’Auteuil Metro station, it’s a five-minute walk east to the historic core of Auteuil and if you head south, it’s also five minutes to Parc Sainte-Perine, a secluded park with flower beds, play areas and lawns sloping down from a hospital and Pavillon Josephine, an elegant mansion named after the wife of Napoleon I.

Offering a reminder of Auteuil’s bucolic past — the village was edged by fields and vineyards a few centuries ago — it’s a nice place to sit and relax, perhaps with one of those freshly-made baguette sandwiches you can take away at almost every boulangerie you pass.

fact file + For more information on visiting Paris, see parisjetaime.com