Midnight in Paris: Gil's Paris, Then and Now

Gil Pender, a screenwriter and aspiring novelist, is on holiday in Paris with his fiancée Inez and her wealthy parents. The story proper opens in Monet's garden at Giverny, where Gil confesses his love for the romantic image of old Paris. Monet lived on the estate from 1883 until his death in 1926, and the Japanese-style wooden bridge in the water garden, famous from his paintings, is a copy of the original. Giverny lies about fifty miles northwest of the city and makes an easy day trip.

Visitor guidance: Giverny is a day trip from Paris; the house and gardens are run by the Fondation Claude Monet.

Paul, a friend of Inez who speaks about French history with great authority but questionable accuracy, takes the party to Versailles. In the gardens he snidely dismisses Gil's nostalgia as "Golden Age Thinking". The palace returns near the end of the film, when the detective hired to follow Gil gets seriously lost inside, is chased by the guards of Louis XVI just before a revolution breaks out. Today the park covers 815 hectares, against more than 8,000 before the French Revolution.

Visitor guidance: About a 45-minute rail journey from Paris Austerlitz station.

Intoxicated after a night of wine tasting, Gil decides to walk back to the hotel alone and, lost and slightly tipsy, slumps down on the steps of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. At midnight a 1920s car pulls up and carries him to a party for Jean Cocteau, and from then on he travels back to the 1920s each night at midnight. The magic steps are not at the main entrance but at the side of the church, facing north. Inside are the shrine of Saint Geneviève, patron saint of Paris, and the tombs of Pascal and Racine.

Visitor guidance: The film's steps are at the side of the church, facing north, not at the main entrance.

The car delivers Gil to a party that the locations guide places on Quai de Bourbon, on the western tip of Île Saint-Louis. With Cole Porter playing the piano, the hosts introduce themselves as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Gil realises something very odd is going on. The evening does not last: Zelda, bored, takes Scott and Gil away to a cafe, where they run into Ernest Hemingway and Juan Belmonte.

Location precision: The guide names only the quay for the party, not a building; the pin marks the street.

Visitor guidance: A public street on the island; the nearest metro is Pont Marie.

After Zelda and Scott leave, Gil and Hemingway discuss writing, and Hemingway offers to show Gil's novel to Gertrude Stein. A locations guide identifies the setting as Polidor, 41 rue Monsieur le Prince, a restaurant dating from 1845 that Hemingway really did frequent. When Gil leaves to fetch his manuscript he returns to 2010 to find a laundromat in the cafe's location, but Polidor itself has not become a launderette. It is open 365 days a year, and most diners sit at long shared tables.

Visitor guidance: Open 365 days a year; most diners share long tables.

The surrealist wedding party, where Gil pitches the idea for The Exterminating Angel to a flummoxed Luis Buñuel, is shot at Deyrolle, awash with insects and taxidermy. Gil explains his situation to Salvador Dalí, Man Ray and Buñuel, and as surrealists they do not question his claim of coming from the future. Woody Allen used the rooms in July 2010. Deyrolle, founded in 1831, is a house of entomology and taxidermy, and today a shop and cabinet of curiosities open to the public.

Visitor guidance: Open to the public as a shop and cabinet of curiosities at 46 rue du Bac.

Back in the present, Gil goes looking for a Cole Porter record and bumps into Gabrielle, an antique dealer and a fellow admirer of the Lost Generation. The locations guide puts the scene in the Marché Paul Bert, part of the Saint-Ouen flea market at Porte de Clignancourt, north of the city. The Paul Bert market has 250 stands in seven aisles and claims the world's largest concentration of antique dealers.

Location precision: The guide names the Marché Paul Bert within the wider Saint-Ouen flea market; the pin marks the market, not a stall.

Visitor guidance: The market is at Porte de Clignancourt, on Paris's northern edge.

A horse-drawn carriage appears and transports Gil and Adriana to the Belle Époque, an era Adriana considers Paris's Golden Age. The guide places this at Maxim's, 3 rue Royale, where scenes for the 1958 musical Gigi were also filmed, then moves on to the Moulin Rouge, where Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Degas all agree that the best era was the Renaissance. Gil realises that chasing nostalgia is fruitless, because the present is always "a little unsatisfying". Maxim's was the social and culinary centre of Paris in la belle époque, and is known for its Art Nouveau decor.

Gil breaks up with Inez and decides to stay in Paris. Walking by the Seine at midnight, no carriage comes by, but he meets Gabrielle again; as it begins to rain, he offers to walk her home and learns they share a love for Paris in the rain. The locations guide puts the scene on Pont Alexandre III, widely regarded as the most ornate, extravagant bridge in the city, which was inaugurated in 1900 for the Exposition Universelle. "Paris is at its most beautiful in the rain," they agree.

Visitor guidance: A public bridge over the Seine, linking the Champs-Élysées quarter with the Invalides.