Paris. The name alone evokes romance, beauty and fun, but it's a hopelessly outdated stereotype. The internet seems surprisingly uninformed about the origin of the saying "gai Paris," which denoted the fun-loving, but pre-sexual-revolution properties of the city. At the torn of the century--nineteenth to twentieth--Paris was the place to be. It was the center of the world, in terms of literature, visual art and Bohemian life, giving birth to many of the modern currents that shaped the last hundred-plus years. While there are traces of that world, if you look carefully, the city today is a very different place.