One of Paris's best-kept secrets among visitors who rarely venture into the working-class 19th arrondissement. The Buttes-Chaumont is the city's most dramatic park: a fantasy landscape created by Napoleon III in the 1860s on the site of a former rubbish dump and quarry. The designers engineered steep cliffs, a 30-metre waterfall, artificial caves, and a lake with a 50-metre island at its centre.
Climb to the island's summit — Temple de la Sibylle sits at the top — for views over northern Paris that most tourists never see. The suspension bridge across the lake is slightly vertiginous. The caves underneath the island have safe walkways with railings, popular with children. The park also has a working café and excellent picnic spots.
This is where Parisians from the 19th and 20th arrondissements come on weekends. It feels local, uncrowded, and genuinely Parisian in a way that the central parks cannot always claim. Métro: Buttes Chaumont or Botzaris.