The history of Paris comes alive when you get to know the characters that made their mark on the city over the centuries.

And you could just pay through one window and one building in different centuries and construct a whole history in miniature of the city.

Graham Rob helps us see Paris through the eyes of its most influential residents.

In Italy, there's a saying about the people who live in the three regions in the middle of the country.

There is sarcastic Tuscany people, very solid and slow Umbran people and very enjoying life people from Lazio.

And find a souvenir that's uniquely used by sourcing ingredients around the world to create your own perfect perfume.

I mean a good scent should never shout at you. It should be subtle in the wake of somebody leaving.

You smell a slight cloud of their scent and their presence.

Come along as we follow the scent trail, explore the heart of Italy and meet some famous Parisians. It's travel with Rick Steves.

You could travel the world to find just the right ingredients to create your own special perfume.

We'll hear in a bit from a woman who did just that.

And while Tuscany may be the most romanticized region of Italy, a vendor from neighboring Umbran suggests there's a lot more to the heart of Italy that you should explore.

That's coming up on today's travel with Rick Steves.

A listener in Maryland once suggested that I interview a British author who wrote a groundbreaking book called The Discovery of France after bicycling around the country.

Eventually we noticed that Graham Robb kept writing highly praised books about France, about the early Celts and about noteworthy characters in the history of Paris.

Graham Robb joins us now to introduce us to some of Paris's most notable characters that he profiles in his book Parisians.

Hey Graham.

Thanks for inviting me, Rick.

Now you wrote a book about Paris and rather than a chronology, you're kind of telling the story of Paris with a series of stories about people, not presidents and great generals, but adulterers, poets, spies, prostitutes, revolutionaries.

Why do we learn a lot about Paris by looking at these kind of characters?

Because the, like any city, Paris is the people who live in it.

And of course you can write a history of the infrastructure that makes up the city, it's buildings and street lighting and drains and the mitten and so on.

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