The past is always present

Part of the allure of Paris is the way in which it combines history with a welcoming, lived-in feel, says Natasha Edwards

Paris gains a new gallery this week with the opening on 2 May of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, created by the veteran French photographer and his wife Martine Franck. The venue is a stylishly renovated block of 19th-century artists' studios in Montparnasse. The Fondation has two floors of exhibition space and houses a library and Cartier-Bresson's archives (visit their website at www.henricartierbresson.org or ring 00 33 1 47 03 61 00 for more information). It is also intended to be a place of creation with exhibitions by other artists and photographers and a biennial prize. Curiously, the opening salvo is of Cartier-Bresson's choice of other photographers he admires.

To get an idea of the photographer's own phenomenal output spanning over half a century you should visit "De qui s'agit-il?", a major retrospective, 29 April-27 July, at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. This exhibition covers Cartier-Bresson's reportages from Mexico and the US, the Spanish Civil War, and his memorable portraits of artists in Indonesia, China and Russia, as well as his paintings and the drawings that he is still producing at the age of 94.

It's an eminent addition to what is probably already the most museum-rich city in the world. And yet for all its eye-grabbing monuments what strikes you about Paris is just how lived-in it is.

MONUMENTS AND BOULEVARDS

That's all part of the paradox of a place that is a combination of metropolitan bustle and laid-back art de vivre. There is no Dome-like soul-searching here about what purpose monuments serve – the glorification of a French monarch or president, the grandeur of the French nation are all linked into a unifying vision of the French capital. Long before Haussmann's boulevards, there were the beginnings of the Champs-Elysées, Louis XIV's Place Vendôme and Napoléon's Arc de Triomphe. "L'Etat, c'est moi,"said Louis XIV and Paris was part of that moi as well. Squares and piazzas form part of a complex web of viewpoints and sweeping vistas that preferably train the eye up broad avenues to some arresting fountain, church, opera house, triumphal arch or train station. When Paris absorbed rural villages it did so by organised leaps. Yet, another side of Paris exists alongside its grandeur: intimate Marais courtyards, hilly Latin Quarter side streets or the alleyways of furniture workshops in the Bastille.

One monument that exemplifies a particularly French conception of national greatness is the Panthéon, a massive domed 18th-century structure originally intended to be a church before being converted during the French Revolution into the resting place of the nation's great men who are buried in the crypt. New heroes are occasionally added: last year it was Alexandre Dumas, this summer it's the turn of Hector Berlioz. It's worth a look inside the never-to-be-church, too. Here's a recreation of Foucault's pendulum whereby he demonstrated the rotation of the earth, and the murals by symbolist painter Puvis de Chavannes depicting the life of Sainte-Geneviève, which influenced Picasso's blue period.

APARTMENTS VERSUS HOUSES

One of the most striking things about Paris, though, is its sheer, inhabited density, with none of that British dream of houses and gardens. Unlike the miles of urban sprawl of London, Paris is a compact entity in its 20 arrondissements (beyond which the suburbs form quite another, lesser world, akin for most Parisians to outer Mongolia). Here, Parisians live piled up high. The standard Haussmannian apartment building is six or seven storeys, each a fascinating microcosm of society, a hierarchy of front and rear staircases, of grand balconied apartments and tiny chambres de bonne. There is no empty heart of the city; everywhere – even in the most businessy districts – has its schools, apartments and food markets, pétanque pitches, cafés and squares with slides and sandpits. Parisians may be intrigued by London, but they perhaps feel more akin to New York. All of which means that while Paris can seem positively laid-back and relaxed compared to London – all those café terraces, all those long lunches that make up the Parisian way of life – it gives the whole city an urban intensity, the pent-up energy of apartment dwelling.

PARKS

While in London people pretend to be in the countryside, picnic on the grass, play football or even watch deer, Paris's attempts at rural idyll – the two Bois on either side of the city – are dismal scrubby failures. No, Paris's best parks are all about being urban; nature here is deliberately tamed and turned into gravel parterres and landscaped terraces, and the possibility of sitting on the grass is only a recently gained social right. These are places of entertainment and fresh-ish air for flat-living inhabitants, where you can perfect the ultimate Parisian art of people-watching. The ultimate Paris park, with its effortless blend of the cosmopolitan and the provincial, is the Jardins du Luxembourg, full of statuary, boating, pony rides, marionette shows, slides and swingboats. This is a place where you can watch joggers in the morning and brass bands on summer afternoons, or perhaps play tennis, chess and boules. Then there's the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in the northeast of the city, which has a feast of wilfully fake craggy rocks and waterfalls constructed on old quarries.

FORMER RESIDENTS

Several of Paris's best museums reflect the city's lived-in quality, too. Unlike purpose-built museums, the Louvre was once a royal palace, home to successive generations of French monarchs and later emperors. The museum to end all museums, it is a combination of the National Gallery, the British Museum and the V&A all rolled into one. Don't let its sheer size nor the vast numbers of visitors who pour into it put you off a visit. Despite having half a medieval castle concealed in the basement and having been a museum for over 200 years, it is also one of Paris's most up-to-date museums.

You can continue your art historical trawl through the Musée d'Orsay and Centre Pompidou, the chronological continuation of the national collection, and other world-class displays such as the Musée Picasso, Musée Marmottan and Musée Rodin, but I'd suggest visiting some of those museums that were also private houses and which reflect the changing face of Paris.

The Musée Jacquemart-André in a grandiose mansion built by Edouard André and Nélie Jacquemart, his artist wife, is a self-satisfied expression of haute-bourgeois confidence and wealth of the late 19th century. However, the pomp is matched by the sheer quality of the art collection, including among others, three little Rembrandts, a Boucher and fabulous Italian Renaissance works by Mantegna, Botticelli and Uccello. Sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, who began as assistant to Rodin, may not be an A-lister himself, but the Musée Bourdelle brings back plenty of the atmosphere of old artistic Montparnasse. As well as galleries devoted to Bourdelle's studies of Beethoven, there's Bourdelle's old apartment and a rustic row of remaining studios, whose tenants once included Eugène Carrière, Jules Dalou and Marc Chagall.

CAFES

Ultimately, though, if you only do one thing to really catch of glimpse of Parisian life then it has to be the Paris café. Coffee houses may have swamped London in the past decade, with weak coffee and lots of froth, but they lack the Parisian café's chameleon-like ability to mutate effortlessly from breakfast bar to lunch spot, afternoon sun terrace to late-night bar. While France can be as class-conscious as anywhere else in Europe, here there is no strict segregation between greasy spoon on one hand and illustrious literary haunt or designer bar on the other. With a couple of thousand to choose from, one is spoiled for choice, but why not start with two of the most sought-after terraces in town? With wicker chairs, palm tree mouldings and paintings, elegant Le Rostand (6 Place Edmond-Rostand) has a vaguely Oriental feel inside and views of the Jardins du Luxembourg from the spacious terrace; it's perfect for posing in sunglasses by day, slightly decadent by night. Pause Café (41 Rue de Charonne) is the lunchtime haunt of Bastille arty and creative types with its big windows, funky chandelier, coloured formica tables, great food and a terrace to fight for – get there early to grab a seat.