Lavie Maison : Spacious Studio near Montmartre

Five floors up, the rooftops of the 17e open out in that slate-grey patchwork you only get in Paris. The lift hums. The key is already waiting in the lockbox.

Twenty-five square metres, used well. A sofa bed for the night, a kitchenette kitted out for slow mornings — kettle, oven, proper wine glasses — and a dishwasher so the coffee cups don't pile up.

Rue Guy Môquet is the address, and the street market a few doors down is the reason to set an alarm. Cafés, a boulangerie or two, the métro on line 13 two minutes away — Montmartre is the next hill over.

It suits a couple, or a solo traveller settling in for a longer stretch. Pets welcome, with a note. What you'll remember is the quiet, and that view from the fifth floor.

Step out and the rue des Dames slopes gently toward Batignolles — a butcher's striped awning, the green cross of the pharmacy blinking above a corner where scooters idle, the smell of butter from the boulangerie before the métro at Place de Clichy has properly woken up. Locals walk small dogs. Nobody is in a rush.

Saturday mornings belong to the Marché biologique des Batignolles on boulevard de Courcelles — oysters shucked on ice, Brebis from the Pyrénées, a queue at the rotisserie van that's worth standing in. Go early, take a coffee at Le Bal Café behind the gare, and you'll understand why people who live in the 17e rarely cross the river.