Lavie Maison : Architect flat with AC

Rue Portefoin is quiet for the Marais — a narrow street where the morning starts with the baker two doors down and the soft clack of shutters opening.

Forty-five square meters, drawn by an architect who clearly thought about how a small flat should breathe. Air conditioning in both the living room and the bedroom (rare, here), an en-suite bathroom off the bedroom, plus a second bathroom with a heated towel rail.

Walk five minutes and you're at Marché des Enfants Rouges, the oldest covered market in Paris, for Moroccan lunch under the glass roof. The Picasso Museum and Square du Temple are around the corner.

For a couple, or four friends willing to share the sofa bed, it's the kind of base where you stop checking the métro map by day two. What stays with you is the quiet of the street.

Step out and the 3e arrondissement does what it always does in the morning — a delivery truck blocking half of rue de Bretagne, someone smoking outside the tabac, the scrape of café chairs being unstacked. The Haut-Marais is quieter than its reputation suggests before 10h, all narrow pavements and shuttered galleries, the smell of butter from a boulangerie a few doors down.

Walk five minutes to the Marché des Enfants Rouges, the oldest covered market in Paris, tucked behind a green gate on rue de Bretagne. Go for the Moroccan stall — Alain's tagine, eaten at a wobbly table among the flower buckets — or just a coffee from L'Estaminet. Saturdays it's packed by noon; the trick is to arrive at 11h, before the queue.