Parc Monceau was a private folly garden before Paris made it public, and it still reads like one rich man's collection of follies — a fake Roman colonnade, a little Egyptian pyramid, a gilded tollhouse at the gate. Around it sit the hôtels particuliers of the plaine Monceau, the mansions the new money of the 19th century built to be looked at. This is the leafy, moneyed northwest, walked slowly.
Enter by the Rotonde de Chartres, the domed customs-wall survivor, and find the colonnade reflected in its oval pond, then the pyramid among the plane trees. Leave the park for its two mansion-museums: the Musée Nissim de Camondo, a house kept exactly as its family left it, with a story that darkens as you climb the stairs; and the Musée Cernuschi, a banker's Asian-art collection, free and quiet.
Then come down to earth on rue de Lévis, the market street — fromager, primeur, boulangerie, all shouting at once. A plain, useful finish after the gilt, and Villiers métro at the end of it.
