6th Arrondissement - Rive Gauche: Paris

To complicate things further, the two Rive Gauche arrondissements, roughly equivalent to the ancient parishes of St Michel and St Germain, are separated by another dividing line. While the 5th has remained resolutely academic, all bookshops and Bohemian street cafés, the 6th has acquired more than a little bourgeois respectability along the way.

Its patron saint is Pablo Picasso, the Communist with a four-storey mansion on the Quai des Grands Augustins, the man who invented cubist painting and champagne socialism. His favourite hangout was the Brasserie Lipp on Boulevard Saint Germain, even today a hip place to go, right across from the two most famous coffee shops in the world, the Cafe Flore and the Deux Magots, frequented before WWII by two warring tribes of scribes, right-wing and left-wing respectively. (JP Sarte wrote many of his works, including, presumably, the odd Maoist pamphlet, in the lush surroundings of the Deux Magots where they still preserve his favourite table as if it was a shrine).

Tip: when the sun is out, it try some of the cheap and cheerful take-away restaurants near the Pantheon (over in the 5th) that cater to students and bring your meal for an al fresco to the Jardin du Luxembourg.