Les Invalides: the gold dome, Rodin's garden, rue Cler
A soldiers' palace, The Thinker in a rose garden, and the market street that feeds the ministries. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Musée Rodin garden
Start here, not at the dome. The garden ticket is cheap and you can wander the sculpture lawns alone — The Thinker, The Gates of Hell, the Burghers — before the day fills up. Closed Mondays, so come another day if it's the start of the week.

2. Rue de Varenne
Walk the ministry street west. Behind these high walls and *porte-cochère* gates sit the Hôtel Matignon and half the government; you won't see in, but the scale of the doors tells you who lives here.

3. Hôtel des Invalides — the Dôme
The gold-domed church holds Napoleon's tomb under the cupola — a giant red sarcophagus in a sunken well. Worth the ticket for the room alone. Or just stand under the dome from outside and feel suitably small.

4. Esplanade des Invalides
The vast green slope running down to the river. Walk out onto it and turn back: the gold dome over the long grey facade is the view the whole quarter was built to give you.

5. Rue Cler
End on the market street — a pedestrian run of *fromageries*, a *boulangerie* (bakery), café tables, the lunch crowd from the surrounding ministries. Buy bread and cheese and eat it on the Champ de Mars five minutes on.

Les Invalides: the gold dome, Rodin's garden, rue Cler