Paris or London? From 'coup de foudre' to 'slow burn love': the pros and cons of Europe's two beacons.

Paris or London. "Comparison is only acceptable in the superlative degree," wrote Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities , that double-edged tale that took us from the dull London of George III to the frenzied Paris of the French Revolution ("Liberty, Equality, Fraternity... or Death"). Times have changed; they are for better or worse depending on how you look at it. The fact is that the two capitals remain locked in their age-old rivalry as beacons of Europe .

Paris is known as "the City of Light" for being the first city to have gas street lighting, a feat that some date back to the time of Louis XIV, the Sun King. London, meanwhile, boasts of having been the first city with an Underground, back in 1863, in the midst of the industrial boom of the Victorian era.

It takes two hours and 18 minutes for the fastest Eurostar to cross under the English Channel and connect the two cities, separated by just 342 kilometers, as different as they are close . And despite the differences, the comparisons are obvious: the Seine and the Thames, the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben, Notre Dame and Westminster Abbey, the Louvre and the British Museum, Dickens and Balzac, Sherlock Holmes and Commissaire Maigret, the Blitz and the occupation, the City and La Defense...

Comparing the incomparable would be enough for a series or a book. Let's confess from the outset, and from personal experience, that Paris is often a coup de foudre , a crush that instantly enters your eyes. While London is more of a slow-burn love , a love that develops over time.

Lutetia vs Londinium

Curiously, in the thread of history, Paris and London are eternally indebted to Rome . In the 1st century BC, under the rule of Emperor Augustus, the occupation of what would become Lutetia began in a marshy area around the Seine, where the Gallic tribe of the Parisii settled. In the 1st century, the layout of the Roman city was erected, south of the river and along the Cardo Maximus , with its forum and also its amphitheater. Children play football there today, in the Arènes de Lutece , where the amphitheater was re-emerged in 1869 during renovations. These are the most important Roman remains in Paris, along with the frigidarium of the Cluny baths, in the heart of the Latin Quarter.

Londinium was the name the Romans gave to the site of the Celtic villages of Llyn Din . Fragments of the Roman city wall, which occupies the perimeter of what is now the City, can still be seen in the Museum of London. Its most visible remains are on Tower Hill, next to the Tower of London. These Roman remains will continue to surface for centuries to come . This very year, the ruins of the first basilica in the Roman city were uncovered on Gracechurch Street.

The straight line in front of the meandering city

With a dizzying leap in time, we find ourselves in 1852 , when Napoleon III entrusted Baron Georges-Eugéne Haussman with the arduous task of modernizing Paris. Haussman ended up razing 60% of the city , demolishing thousands of buildings, forcing the working class to move to the outskirts, and opening wide avenues to give the city its characteristically uniform, bourgeois appearance.

In stark contrast, London never had a town plan, and its labyrinthine layout remains intact . In a classic of British humor, "How to be an Alien ," Hungarian immigrant George Miekes suggested that Londoners continue to lay out streets in S or W shapes to maintain the city's harmony. "London was designed by a drunk driver, that's why it's full of traffic jams," taxi driver Mark Solomon, author of the original book of proverbs, "Black Cab Wisdom," once confided to me.

If Paris is the consecration of the Haussmannian straight line, London is the meandering, multi-centric city. Dickens used to wander aimlessly through it at night to combat insomnia, as he captured in his Night Walks. Balzac, the quintessential Parisian flâneur , would have gotten hopelessly lost in the British capital.

In the plant kingdom

Carlos Magdalena (Gijón, 1972) has been traveling around London for more than two decades and never stops discovering it. The green call brought him there, drawn from afar by the Natural History Museum "with its Harry Potter feel," Regents Park Zoo, and Kew Gardens, the most fascinating botanical garden in the world. Like any true Spaniard, he made his way as a sommelier and rose through the ranks, from intern at Kew to The Messiah of Plants (Ed. Debate), with guest appearances in David Attenborough documentaries and the Officer's Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic.

"London has as much greenery as asphalt, and no major European city can compete with that," emphasizes the Gijón-born botanist. "Beyond Kew lies Richmond Park, with its herds of deer, and the green countryside stretches to Hampton Court. Closer to the center are the marshes of the London Wetland Centre, one of more than twenty nature reserves in the city. Even the crater left by a bomb dropped by the Germans during World War II has been converted into a duck pond (Walthastow Marshes)."

Making his way through the stunning aquatic plants in the Water Lily House, Carlos draws an imaginary bridge to Giverny in France, home to Claude Monet's famous garden. He also thinks of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, which once rivaled Kew Gardens for its specimens.

For Carlos, London's other magnet is music . South of the Thames, "there's been a curious confluence of vegetation and music," he says, because Richmond is home to Olympic Studios. Jumping north, the Beatles' Abbey Road studios are a stone's throw from Regents Park, from where a canal runs to Camden, the quintessential musical district, where hundreds of fans follow the Amy Winehouse trail.

Magnet for artists

For painter Alberto Reguera (Segovia, 1961), with a studio on the Rue de Chabanais next to the Palais Royal gardens, Paris remains a powerful magnet: "I've sometimes wondered why I chose it over New York. I'd say it was because of how I identified with its professionals and collectors, but also because of the beauty of the city, which lends a unique light and charisma to everything you do."

"Its secret is that it blends contemporary projects very well with the city's own history of painting," notes the Segovian, who once exhibited his object-paintings in the Louvre Square. "You walk down the famous Rue de Seine, where the most established art galleries are crowded, and suddenly you come across the Delacroix Museum." "Paris is constantly renewing itself without turning its back on history, and that's part of the magic of this city," he maintains.

Male city, female city

Enrique Rubio , who has been head of the Efe delegations in both cities, arrived in post-Brexit London and has a very peculiar vision of their rivalry: "London is a masculine city and Paris, the feminine counterpoint. I heard a Parisian friend say this. In Paris there is a drive towards beauty in everything : in the buildings, in the shops, in the flirtatiousness of the people. It is a very hedonistic city where you can enjoy the most mundane pleasures: eating well and in good company, sitting down to drink wine in a bistro, strolling through streets that are monuments..."

"I've always felt closer to the French way of life than the English," he admits. "But London has ended up cultivating me for other reasons. It's less hedonistic. People get down to business and rush from one place to another; the distances are enormous, and that limits and complicates social life. On the one hand, it's unmanageable, but you don't feel the pressure of the big city and you end up living a lot in the neighborhood."

Post-Olympic delirium

Finally, let's say that Paris is experiencing post-Olympic frenzy this summer, with the floating cauldron rising every night over the Tuileries Garden. The Champs-Élysées has once again ceded the spotlight to Montmartre, with the second Tour de France climb down the iconic Rue Lepic.

The enduring influence of the Games has been matched by that of Notre-Dame , which saw six million visitors in the first half of the year. The €700 million restoration, which involved 2,000 artisans, has both dazzled and disappointed tourists who return to visit it for free. The cathedral is surprisingly luminous, in contrast to its previous gloom.

It's rained a lot in Paris this summer, but it hasn't been to everyone's liking. Over the past decade, under Anne Hidalgo's leadership, the city has undergone an accelerated ecological transition . Bicycle use has increased from 2% to 12%, Parisians have supported the creation of 500 garden streets, and the concept of the "15-minute city" is being exported to many other cities. The baths in the Seine are the final legacy of the Andalusian mayor, who will leave office in March.

London had its own Olympic momentum in 2012 , with Boris Johnson hanging onto the zip line and the city's forgotten east coast riding the wave of the times. But the former mayor was determined to deliver a fatal blow to the city four years later with Brexit.

Summer in the British capital is essentially musical , with concerts in Hyde Park and festivals like All Points East in Victoria Park. However, the biggest street event was once again the Notting Hill Carnival with its Caribbean-inspired decorations. There are also free museums—the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery, the Tate Modern—and the West End theaters, with a new record of 17.1 million spectators.

Nothing better to round off your summer in London than a hike up Hampstead Heath, an urban forest with three year-round swimming pools (men's, women's, and mixed). From Parliament Hill, in the heart of the park, London emerges beneath the parade of clouds (something it has in common with Paris), with distant glimpses of the skyline and the pinnacle of the Shard marking the horizon.