Paris remains one of the world’s most visited cities, and of those tens of millions drawn to its remarkably compact centre each year, the Marais district exerts a magnetic pull. Fashionable among aristocrats before Louis XIV – the “Sun King” – moved his court from Versailles, this pungent quarter of narrow streets and jumble of historic houses and courtyards sank into near-squalor in succeeding centuries before its renaissance in recent decades as a charming labyrinth of fashion boutiques, cafés, restaurants, museums and galleries.