Paris - Nightlife

Dress your best for exclusive Champs-Elysées clubs or chill with a young crowd around Bastille.

A young, trendy crowd party around Bastille and along the rue de Lappe, rue des Taillandiers, rue de Charonne and rue de la Roquette (near métros Bastille, Voltaire and Ledru Rollin). Stop for sangria in the Barrio Latino to see the Gustave Eiffel-designed interior.

The Marais welcomes gay or straight revellers. Sophisticated but relaxed, it's a popular choice with 30-somethings and media types.

Dressed up and designer clubbing is drawn to the Champs-Elysées area, where leading venues include the exclusive Le Baron (where just getting past the doormen is a coup). An older crowd consume bubbly at the classic Lido cabaret.

Pigalle is reliably sleazy, although home to the glittery Moulin Rouge cabaret. The district smartens up along rue des Abesses, which is dotted with laid-back little bars.

Bars tend to open Monday-Saturday until around 2am and clubs until 5am. Dance till the morning at after-parties at Folies Pigalles in Montmartre and Batofar on the Seine, near the Bibliothèque Nationale.

Drive down an appropriate avenue while singing along to Joe Dassin's cheesy Aux Champs-Elysées in a classic 1960s' Citroën DS; wander the hip 11th arrondissement to Air's Late Night Tales compilation on your iPod; do as lovers do anywhere under the sky of Paris to Edith Piaf's Sous le Ciel de Paris.