A walk for the urban aesthete or anyone who enjoys city planning  and architecture and wants to make sense of how the city's core changes shape significantly from before the reign of Louis XIV to the later 19th century. We shift scenery with every step from the river Seine to the Opera district. From our meeting point at the statue of Henry IV on Pont Neuf in the 1st arrondissement we move to low ground, high ground, and the “underground” before going above ground to inspect today's haunts and yesteryear's flops and flaunts. Along the way we will reveal the urban experiences that have animated Paris since Georges-Eugène Hausmann and the Second Empire birthed the dissolute lifestyle.