Parc Monceau: the folly garden and the mansions
A folly-strewn park, two mansion-museums, and a market street to finish. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Rotonde de Chartres
The domed tollhouse at the park gate — one of the few survivors of the 18th-century customs wall, gilded back up to its old swagger. Enter the park here; it's the grandest possible front door.

2. The colonnade & the naumachie
Inside, a curved row of Corinthian columns reflected in an oval pond — a folly built to look like a Roman ruin, because the 1770s found that romantic. Walk the curve; it's the picture everyone takes here, and rightly.

3. The pyramid
Further in, a small Egyptian pyramid stands among the planes and the joggers, another of the garden's deliberate oddities. The park was a private folly before it was public, and it still feels like someone's eccentric collection.

4. Musée Nissim de Camondo
An *hôtel particulier* (private mansion) on the park's edge, kept exactly as the Camondo family left it — 18th-century rooms frozen in place, and a family story that turns very dark. Go in; it's the most affecting house-museum in the city.

5. Musée Cernuschi
A few doors along, the Asian-art collection of a 19th-century banker in his own mansion. Free, rarely crowded; even a quick pass through the ground-floor rooms is worth the turn off the park.

6. Rue de Lévis
Drop off the grand streets onto the market street — a pedestrian run of *fromager*, *primeur* and *boulangerie* stalls that feeds the whole quarter. A loud, ordinary finish after all that gilt, which is exactly what's wanted.

Parc Monceau: the folly garden and the mansions