The eighth arrondissement, wedged between the Seine and the Parc Monceau, traversed by the Champs-Elysées, is chic. Anchored by the Arc de Triomphe at the Etoile at one end and the place de la Concorde at the other, it embraces, as well, a substantial length of the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The eighth is less predominantly residential than the impenetrable sixteenth— Paris’s equivalent of the Upper East Side— since it includes, along with its streets of elegant apartments, high-rent office buildings and such public monuments as those overblown Beaux-Arts exhibition halls, the Grand and Petit Palais, plus the Ministry of the Interior, the embassies of Great Britain and the United States, and the Palais de l’Elysée. The rue Royale and the Madeleine are just within the limits of the eighth, but not surprisingly for an arrondissement that boasts the avenue Montaigne, with its couturier shops and ...

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