Île Saint-Louis

This guide to Ile Saint-Louis in Paris opens with Charles Baudelaire climbing the stairs of the Hotel de Lauzun once a month in the 1840s to join the Club des Hashischins, a circle of writers and painters that included Delacroix and Gautier. It traces the island's own strange origin: two uninhabited mudflats merged and built up in a single thirty-year campaign under Louis XIII, giving its streets an unusual unity. The guide also stops at Berthillon, the ice cream shop that's been serving from the same address since 1954.