CIRCLE D'AMOUR

For an object lesson on how to design a Paris love nest, look to Pierre Yovanovitch.

- Laura May

Paris, it is often said, is the city of love. It's a cliché, sure, but for some, it very much feels like the truth. For a French Lebanese couple who recently renovated a pied-à-terre here, Paris is the setting for a joyous second act. Both the wife and the husband were previously divorced, with children from their first marriages. "It was love at first sight" when they met, she says. They settled in Beirut but set their sights on a Parisian getaway-"a place with a view, like out of a movie."

The apartment they found-in a 1925 Haussmannian building wedged between the Trocadéro gardens and the Seine is indisputably cinematic. The living room's curving wall of French doors faces the ultimate Parisian symbol: a perfectly framed vista of the Eiffel Tower.