Parc Monceau  

The area of Paris North of the Champs-Élysées is seldom visited, because it’s essentially a place where people live. The western half of the area includes some of the largest and most elegant private town houses in the world. Parc Monceau, at the end of a very smart avenue leading from the Arc de Triomphe, suits these surroundings. The railings are gilded, the gates look like those of a palace, the public loo is in an 18th-century rotunda. There are lots of statues, a waterfall, the usual sandpit and slide with elegant benches for nannies, and a Naumachia - a pond surrounded by a colonnade, of a type on which Ancient Romans used to fight mock battles with galleys. This one, though, was built as a ready-made ruin by Haussmann in 1860. 

East of the Parc is Batignolles, a working-class district with a number of small hotels and its own park, recently restored and delightful in its own way. The pond has a sculptured rock in it, with sculptured birds; and the miniature cascade is a triumph of the rock-gardener’s art.