One hundred years ago, Paris was the world's cultural colossus. Strolling along its boulevards, you stood a chance of bumping into Picasso, Rodin, Matisse, Proust, Debussy, Ravel or Monet.

You may have glimpsed the philosopher Henri Bergson, the actress Sarah Bernhardt or the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

In a cafe, you could have rubbed shoulders with Georges Braque, Jean Cocteau, Ezra Pound, Edith Wharton or Henry James - any of the scores of established or budding stars, French or foreign, who came to Paris to bathe in its magic.

Today, to France's worry, Paris is no longer the place to be. To the rest of the world, the city - for all its beauty - has become a backwater in many cultural areas. Its temples to the arts - the Pompidou Centre, the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, the Opera, the Comedie Francaise and so on - are indeed filled.

But the worshippers these days are consumers, not creators. They are mainly foreign tourists who come to see the eternal Mona Lisa, post-modern American artists, the French Impressionists and Moliere. The city chemistry that produced rawness, dynamism, change and challenge seems absent.

"Paris, and France, are definitely having an identity crisis," says Christophe Boicos, a gallery owner and art professor for several American universities. "They have been living off their 19th- and 20th-century heritage for a long time. At the opening of the 21st century, they need to redefine themselves."

Artists looking for the buzz go to London or Berlin, or further afield to New York, rather than Paris, says German art historian Wilfried Rogasch. "Paris is in stagnation. Talented people from around the world go to Paris. But they don't go there for stimulation, they go to see Paris."

Auction houses in Paris account for only 8 per cent of all public sales of contemporary art, says Alain Quemin, a professor of the sociology of art at the Institut Universitaire de France.

According to the German magazine Capital, the top 10 of the world's most widely exposed artists has four Germans but no one from France.

In the 1950s and 60s, the Paris literary scene dazzled the world with writers and philosophers of the calibre of Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus.

France still turns out hundreds of novels each year, but few are chosen for translation abroad. With the exception of Yasmina Reza, those French authors who are known outside France, such as Michel Houellebecq, are big on melancholy and cynicism, and this does not travel well.

In visual arts, Quemin laments how French contemporary artists have slid down the world league since the 1950s, when Paris was the centre of the world. He ranks New York as the top dog in this field, followed by Berlin and London.

"Who could have believed that one day, only one living French artist would be visible at the MoMA [Museum of Modern Art] in New York _ Jacques Villegle, who is more than 80 years old today? And that only two would be on display in the most important contemporary art institution in London, the Tate Modern?" asks Quemin.