Paris, Gare du Nord

Arriving from London on the Eurostar, Paris can be slightly underwhelming - after the beautifully restored St Pancras, I'm afraid Gare du Nord seems pretty grotty.

It's certainly big - at 190 million passengers a year, it is unmistakably the busiest railway station in Europe.

But it's not beautiful: the northern reaches of Paris are not the most salubrious, and the station attracts loiterers and barrier jumpers (we were the strange foreigners who actually bought tickets!) and is basically well overdue a revamp. It's also on high security alert at the moment, so our continental welcome was by squads of grim-looking, gun-toting soldiers.

At least the entrance has a certain grandeur: the sculptural display represents the principal cities served by the station. Eight of the nine most majestic statues, crowning the building along the cornice line, illustrate destinations outside France, with the ninth figure of Paris in the center.