To visit a city is to hear its stories and glimpse its ghosts. This book evokes Paris from the Middle Ages through the twentieth century with exceptional women whose lives intersected with Paris in remarkable ways and whose eventual fame depended on the city itself. The women profiled include Madame Roland, Saint Genevieve, Marie Curie, Coco Chanel, Madame de Sevigne, Heloise, Christine de Pizan, Catherine de Medici, _x0192_milie du Chatelet, Madame de Maintenon, Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, Rachel, George Sand, Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, and Camille Claudel. Their stories bring to life medieval culture, Enlightenment ideas, the court of Louis XIV, the chaos of the Revolution, the nineteenth-century art scene, and twentieth-century breakthroughs in science and fashion. Whenever possible, the author allows these women to speak for themselves.The sites associated with each woman are located in the central parts of Paris that most visitors explore. When visiting Notre Dame, the reader will see the tragic figures of Abelard and Heloise in its shadows, and know to look for the enigmatic sculpture of Genevieve on the cathedral's facade. Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun's painting in the Louvre and Camille Claudel's sculptures in the Rodin Museum will be all the more fascinating after learning of the controversy they provoked. Even those women whom most people thought they knew may prove surprising. Each chapter is short enough to read in a sitting, yet long enough to provide the substance and flavor of the period.