Europe

On 21 August, Starwood announced that it had signed a contract to open its first Aloft hotel in Ukraine. The 320-room hotel, including ten suites, will be located in a new building in the heart of the capital's business district. It will have a total of eight meeting rooms and a function room equipped with...

The new Regus Lyon Ouest Verrazzano business centre is located in Lyon's ninth arrondissement. Easily accessible from the A6 motorway or the North ring road, it features high-speed Wi-Fi access, videoconferencing facilities and a multilingual reception and assistance team. The first floor of the Regus Centre is equipped with private offices and...

Spas, thalasso and bal-néo-therapy centres, thermal spas... the habit of taking the waters, so dear to the aristocracy of the 19th century, has been widely democratised since the beginning of the 21st century. According to a study by Raffour Interactif for the Thalasseo.com agency, more than nine million French people took advantage of a wellness offer in 2011. Among these enthusiasts, men, women and children...

It's true that, discovered from this third floor, behind the windows of this incredibly well-located, hyper-contemporary flat that can be privatised for small groups of around thirty people, it's true that, looking down on the decor of Brussels' famous Grand Place, you can't help but be struck by the fact that you're standing on one of the most beautiful...

Telephone: +49 (Germany), (0)40 (Hamburg). Getting there AIR FRANCE offers four daily flights from Paris CDG, with a flight time of 1? hours. In addition, the national airline operates three flights a week between Toulouse and the German city, both of which are Airbus headquarters. Journey time: 2h15. All...

Transforming a former industrial district, now the uncertain heart of alternative Berlin, into a mixed-use district on the banks of the River Spree, where the stars of the international media industry and other companies attracted by this 'trendy' environment would set up shop: that was the whole point of the project launched at the turn of the millennium... Where,...

You have to weave in and out of the street artists, weave around the watercolour artists, elbow your way through the crowds... Just like every day, Charles Bridge echoes to the beat of tourists. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, walk the 516 metres of Prague's most famous landmark, a link that...

Since 1 March 2008, Hamburg has been home to a new district: HafenCity, a succession of islands reclaimed from the Elbe. The destiny of this laboratory for the future of the great Hanseatic city changed in 2000, when it was decided to convert the docks of Germany's largest port into offices and flats. The idea is obviously not new,...

Cultural, lively, festive: Turkey's business capital continues to attract foreign investors as well as tourists from all over the world. The proof: off to an excellent start, 2011 is set to end with a 15 % increase in the number of foreign visitors. But the Istanbul craze is not just about capital movements...

Identity card Currency: euro. Time difference: none Area code: +34 (Spain); 91 (Madrid) Getting there BY PLANE: AIR FRANCE operates three daily flights from Paris CDG to Madrid Barajas. Tel: 0820 320 820 Internet: www.airfrance.com AIR EUROPA operates three flights a day from Paris...

Identity card Currency: In August 2011, 1 pound sterling = 1.14 euros Area code: +44 (United Kingdom); 20 (London) View London Practical Guide on a larger map Getting there Eurostar links Paris Gare du Nord with London St Pancras in 2 hours 15 minutes, every half-hour at rush hour and every hour at night....

Behind the greatest discretion sometimes lies the greatest daring. Sweden is a perfect illustration of this paradox. Since the invention of the match, the zip fastener and dynamite, this country of barely 10 million inhabitants has made a habit of offering the European market some of its most innovative products. Better still! This...

They will discover a setting that seems to have come straight out of a 3-D project, an urban planner's dream full of new-generation buildings, large mineral masses and green spaces. "Paris Rive Gauche" is the name given to this major project stretching from the Gare d'Austerlitz to the Paris ring road. Launched in 1994...

And there's a plethora to choose from, to say the least. Armani, Versace, Prada, Valentino, Trussardi, Ferrè, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Moschino, Missoni, Miu Miu and all the others... The city's ability to bring out a new world-renowned creative talent every few years leaves us breathless. But there are...

With just over a million inhabitants, Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city, behind Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. But above all, it is the largest city in the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan area, with 10 million inhabitants living in one of Europe's major economic centres. Europe: that's the cradle and natural horizon of this city...

La Grande Catherine, a trendsetter? In her own way. By welcoming Diderot to her court and buying Voltaire's library after his death in 1778, she set in motion a fashion that is still very much in vogue in the Russia of 2010: that of French belles choses. Admittedly, France no longer dominates the...

"City is the body that, like Epad at La Défense, will manage the operation of the new business district and its economic activities", explains its very young vice-president, Dmitri Grandkin. The aim is to turn this site, which is still under construction, into a high-flying business district within the next three to five years. Created in 1992 to...

"There isn't one Russia, there are three," says Pavel Chinsky, director of the French Chamber of Commerce in Moscow. "The 'Russia of the dollar king', with a dozen or so cities of more than a million inhabitants served by airports, stocked with large foreign retailers and mainly inhabited by expatriates. Then "The...