Every year more than 7m people stand patiently in line for the lift to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. The ride costs €7.80 and the wait can be anything from 30 minutes to two hours. There is another way. Book a table at the Jules Verne restaurant and you’re whisked straight to the second floor dining room in a private lift. Granted it costs a bit more (menus from €75 at lunch to €190 at dinner) but you get those jaw-dropping views from the comfort of a designer chair, fitfully good food, complicitous service, swanky lavatories and Parisian mood music in the lift (going up, Edith Piaf; coming down, Carla Bruni aka Madame Sarkozy).

The Jules Verne, one of Alain Ducasse’s newest ventures (on which he recently secured a nine-year lease), reopened just before Christmas after a four-month revamp. The décor, by designer Patrick Jouin, hovers between space-age modern and 1970s retro-chic, chocolate brown with the occasional orange flash.