Paris is known as the City of Light. Part of the credit for this soubriquet can be ascribed to long-standing city ordinances that have restricted the height of buildings in the central city. A more modest skyline, interrupted only by the Eiffel Tower, the Tour Montparnasse, Sacré-Coeur, and a few church steeples, lends this city's citizens virtually unfettered access to natural light. Nonetheless, another significant contributor to the feeling of openness in Paris is the vast number of public spaces, both green and paved, interspersed throughout all twenty arrondissements, that afford the citizen the opportunity to escape, if only momentarily, his urban environment and partake of air and light like his cousins in the provinces. The following article (and its accompanying list) concern the public spaces known as squares and places in Paris.