Things to Do in Paris

I have been coming to Paris for twenty years and I still get the first morning wrong. I always plan too much, walk too far, and end up eating a bad sandwich near a monument I could have seen properly for the same money. The city is not difficult. It is just dense, and it punishes people who arrive without a plan and a rough idea of what things cost.

So this is the guide I wish someone had handed me. The best things to do in Paris are the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre-Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, the Musée d’Orsay and a day at Versailles. Most cost between €12.50 and €37 in 2026, Notre-Dame is free, and roughly half of what makes Paris worth the flight, including Montmartre, the Marais and the Seine itself, costs nothing at all.

What changed in Paris in 2026

This is the part to read before you book anything, because four things shifted this year and every one of them can waste a morning.

Non-European visitors now pay more at the headline sights. From mid-January 2026 the Louvre charges €32 to visitors from outside the European Economic Area and €22 to EEA citizens and residents. Sainte-Chapelle went to €22 and €16 on the same principle from 12 January. Versailles introduced a €3 EEA discount on 14 January and split its year into high and low season pricing. If you hold an EEA passport or a residence permit valid for more than four months, carry it. It is worth €10 at the Louvre door.

Two famous viewpoints have closed, and a third landmark is shut for the decade. The Montparnasse Tower observation deck shut permanently on 31 March 2026 for a redevelopment of the whole building, with no reopening date announced. The rooftop at the Grande Arche de la Défense closed in April 2023 and never reopened. The Centre Pompidou is shut for renovation until around 2030, so the old five-euro escalator-view trick is gone too. All three still turn up on published Paris lists, so check the date on anything that recommends them.

Notre-Dame is open, free, and requires a reservation. The cathedral reopened in December 2024 and drew around 11 million people in its first full year. Entry costs nothing. You book a free timed slot on the cathedral’s own website and nowhere else. The cathedral has published a warning that no third-party platform is authorised to sell tickets and that anything you pay for is a fake. The tower climb is a separate, genuinely ticketed visit at €16, reopened on 20 September 2025, and it sells out.

The transport ticket you have heard of no longer exists. The ticket t+ and the paper carnet were retired in 2025. There is now one flat €2.55 fare that takes you between any two stations in the Île-de-France region on metro, RER and suburban train, whatever the distance. Buses and trams use a separate €2.05 ticket. Paper magnetic tickets stopped being sold on 1 November 2025, so you load fares onto a Navigo Easy card or your phone. Roissybus and Orlybus have both ceased. There is a single €14 Paris Region to Airports ticket that covers CDG and Orly by any rail route, Orlyval included.

None of this is complicated once you know it. All of it costs you time if you do not.

All 42 of the best things to do in Paris at a glance

Nineteen paid attractions with their real 2026 prices, then twenty-three that cost nothing. Time needed is the amount I would block out, not the minimum you could physically get away with. Three things further down the page, the Grand Palais, Disney Adventure World and a market morning, are not in the tables because their prices move too much to publish.

Prices are the standard adult rate for 2026. Under-18s of any nationality go free at every national museum and monument on this list, and EEA citizens and residents under 26 do too, which is the single biggest discount available in Paris. The exceptions are the sites run by the city or by private operators: the Eiffel Tower, the Catacombs and the Sacré-Coeur dome all charge reduced child rates instead of free entry.

Attraction	Adult price 2026	EEA rate	Closing day	Booking	Time needed	Why it earns the slot
Eiffel Tower	€23.50 second floor, €36.70 summit	Same for everyone	Open daily	Essential	2–3 hrs	The view, the engineering, the thing you flew here for
Louvre	€32	€22 EEA	Tuesdays	Essential (compulsory 1 Jul–31 Aug)	3–4 hrs	Largest art museum on earth, and a palace before that
Musée d’Orsay	€16	Same	Mondays	Recommended	2–3 hrs	The Impressionists, in a converted railway station
Towers of Notre-Dame	€16	Same	Check calendar	Online only	1 hr	424 steps to the gargoyles, reopened September 2025
Sainte-Chapelle	€22	€16 EEA	Open daily	Recommended	45 mins	Fifteen metres of 13th-century stained glass
Conciergerie	€13	Same	Open daily	Optional	1 hr	Marie Antoinette’s last address, told with a HistoPad
Arc de Triomphe	€22 Apr–Sep, €16 Oct–Mar	Same	Open daily	Optional	1 hr	The best rooftop in Paris, because the Eiffel Tower is in the shot
Versailles Passport	€35 high season, €25 low	€32 / €22 EEA	Mondays	Essential	Full day	The palace, the Trianon estate and the gardens on one ticket
Catacombs	€31	Same	Check calendar	Essential, released 7 days out	1 hr	Six million Parisians stacked in an old quarry
Palais Garnier (self-guided)	€25	€15 EEA	Matinee days vary	Recommended	1 hr	The gilded opera house that inspired the Phantom
Musée de l’Armée and Napoleon’s Tomb	€17	Same	Check calendar	Optional	2 hrs	Napoleon in a porphyry sarcophagus under the golden dome
Hôtel de la Marine	€17	Same	Check calendar	Optional	1.5 hrs	An 18th-century state interior on Place de la Concorde
Musée Picasso	€16	Same	Mondays	Optional	1.5 hrs	The world’s deepest Picasso holdings, in a Marais mansion
Musée Rodin	About €14	Same	Mondays	Optional	1.5 hrs	The Thinker in a rose garden, the least stressful museum in Paris
Musée Marmottan Monet	€14	Same	Mondays	Optional	1.5 hrs	Where Impression, Sunrise actually lives
Musée de l’Orangerie	€12.50	Same	Tuesdays	Recommended	1 hr	Monet’s Water Lilies in two oval rooms built for them
Sacré-Coeur dome	€8 (16+), €5 under 16	Same	Open daily	Walk up	30 mins	300 steps to the second-highest view in the city
Bateaux Mouches Seine cruise	About €17 online	Same	Open daily	Optional	1–1.5 hrs	The lazy way to see every monument on the river
Vedettes du Pont Neuf	About €15 online	Same	Open daily	Optional	1 hr	Smaller boats, departs from the tip of the Île de la Cité

And twenty-three that cost nothing at all. Notre-Dame and Sacré-Coeur appear on both lists, because the church is free and the climb is not.

Free thing to do	Where	What you need to know
Notre-Dame de Paris	Île de la Cité	Free entry, but book a timed slot on the cathedral’s own site. Every paid ‘ticket’ you see online is a fake.
Sacré-Coeur basilica	Montmartre	The church itself costs nothing. Only the dome climb is paid.
Montmartre and Place du Tertre	18th	Go before 09:00 and the village that Utrillo painted is still there under the crowds.
Père Lachaise Cemetery	20th	44 hectares and Europe’s most visited cemetery. Allow two hours and wear proper shoes.
Jardin du Luxembourg	6th	The best picnic ground in central Paris, and the seat of the French Senate.
Tuileries Garden	1st	Between the Louvre and Concorde. The Olympic Cauldron returns here each summer.
Institut du Monde Arabe rooftop	5th	Lift to the ninth floor for a free Seine-and-Notre-Dame panorama most visitors never find.
Swimming in the Seine	4th, 12th, 15th	Free supervised summer sites at Bercy, Bras Marie and Bras de Grenelle. First legal Seine swim in 102 years.
Paris Plages	Along the Seine and Bassin de la Villette	Sand, deckchairs and pop-up bars, 4 July to 31 August.
Shakespeare and Company	5th	The English-language bookshop opposite Notre-Dame. Browsing is free, the coffee next door is not.
Marché des Enfants Rouges	3rd	The oldest covered market in Paris, 1615, and still the best cheap lunch in the Marais.
Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen	Porte de Clignancourt	The largest antiques market in the world. Saturday morning, cash, no car.
Le Marais on foot	3rd and 4th	Place des Vosges, falafel on rue des Rosiers, and the only district Haussmann did not flatten.
Latin Quarter and the Panthéon square	5th	Rue Mouffetard for the market, the Sorbonne for the students, Arenes de Lutece for the Roman bit.
Saint-Germain-des-Prés	6th	The oldest church in Paris and the cafés where existentialism was invented at €9 a coffee.
Canal Saint-Martin	10th	Where Parisians spend a warm evening. Best after 18:00, worst in the rain.
Pont Alexandre III	7th and 8th	The most ornate bridge in the city, and free to stand on at sunset.
Trocadéro esplanade	16th	The Eiffel Tower photograph everyone wants. Arrive by 07:30 in summer to get it uncluttered.
Galeries Lafayette Haussmann	9th	Free Art Nouveau dome, and a free rooftop terrace above it with an unobstructed Opéra and Eiffel Tower view.
Champs-Élysées and Place de la Concorde	8th	Walk it downhill from the Arc at dusk. The obelisk at the far end is 3,300 years old.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier	8th	Under the Arc, outside the paid monument. The flame is rekindled every evening at 18:30.
The bouquinistes	Both banks	Three kilometres of open-air second-hand bookstalls. Most open late morning and shut in bad weather.
Palais-Royal gardens and the Buren columns	1st	The quietest square within 90 seconds of the Louvre. Open until 22:30 in summer.

Three things you may have read about that are no longer open

No longer open	Status	Detail
Centre Pompidou	Closed for renovation until about 2030	The collection is dispersed across the Grand Palais and other partner venues under the Constellation programme. The old €5 rooftop-view ticket no longer exists.
Montparnasse Tower observation deck	Closed permanently, 31 March 2026	The 56th-floor observatory shut for a multi-year redevelopment of the tower. No reopening date has been announced.
Le Toit de la Grande Arche, La Défense	Closed permanently, 28 April 2023	The rooftop at La Défense has not reopened. The Arc de Triomphe and Sacré-Coeur are the replacements.

The six sights I would not skip on a first trip

If you have three days and you want the Paris of the postcards done properly, it is these six. Everything else on this page is a bonus.

The Eiffel Tower

Yes, obviously. The interesting question is which ticket. The second floor by lift is €23.50 and sits at 116 metres, which is the level where the view resolves into a city rather than a map. The summit at 276 metres is €36.70 and is a different experience: colder, more crowded, more vertical. Climbing the stairs to the second floor costs €14.80 and is the best value ticket on the tower if your knees are willing, because you see the ironwork up close instead of sliding past it in a glass box.

There is no stairs-only route to the summit. The final stage is always a lift, so the cheapest way to the top is the €28.00 stairs-plus-lift combination. Youth tickets for 12 to 24 year olds run €11.80 for the second floor and €18.40 for the summit; children 4 to 11 pay €6.00 and €9.20. Under-4s are free but still need a ticket issued.

Two practical things. From 29 September 2026 stair visits must be reserved in advance, so the old turn-up-and-climb approach is finished. And the summit is regularly suspended in high wind or heavy crowding, so if the top matters to you, go early in the day and go on a calm one. In summer the tower runs 09:00 to midnight with last ascents at 22:45, and it is exceptionally closed on 13 July 2026.

Book at ticket.toureiffel.paris. For the photograph, the Trocadéro esplanade across the river at 07:30 gives you the shot without three hundred people in it.

The Louvre

€32 if you are not from the EEA, €22 if you are, closed Tuesdays, and reservation is compulsory for everyone between 1 July and 31 August. Outside those months you can still walk up, but I would not.

The mistake is treating it as a checklist. The Louvre displays about 35,000 works, from a collection of more than half a million, across a building that was a fortress, then a palace, then a museum. You will not see it. Pick two wings and let the rest go. My standing recommendation for a first visit: the Denon wing for the Italian paintings and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, then Richelieu for the French sculpture courts, which are half empty and twice as beautiful as the room the Mona Lisa is in. Three to four hours. There is no re-entry, so once you leave you are out.

Your ticket also covers temporary exhibitions and the Musée national Eugène-Delacroix on the same or next day, which is worth knowing if you are short of time. The audio guide is €6. On the first Friday of the month after 18:00, entry is free for everyone except in July and August, and free on 14 July. Late openings run to 21:00 on Wednesdays and Fridays, and a 19:00 arrival on a Wednesday is the closest thing to a quiet Louvre that exists.

Book at ticket.louvre.fr. The museum publishes warnings about mirror sites selling inflated tickets, so check the domain.

Notre-Dame de Paris

Free. Reserve a slot on notredamedeparis.fr. Then go, because the restoration is the story of the decade and photographs do not convey it. The stone was cleaned back to a colour nobody alive had seen, the Great Organ has been reinstalled, and the spire is back on the roofline.

Dress modestly: shoulders, torso, stomach and thighs covered, hats off for men. The Treasury is a separate paid visit. Allow 45 minutes inside and another 30 for the square, then walk two minutes to Shakespeare and Company while you are there.

The Towers of Notre-Dame reopened on 20 September 2025 and are the other half of the visit: 424 steps up a new double-helix oak staircase to 69 metres, with passages as narrow as 45 centimetres. €16, booked online only through the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, no on-site sales. Even visitors who enter free still need a timed slot.

Sainte-Chapelle

Fifteen metres of 13th-century stained glass in a room the size of a large chapel, and the reason I tell people to go on a bright morning rather than a grey afternoon. €22, or €16 on an EEA passport. It opens 09:00 to 19:00 from April to September and 09:00 to 17:00 the rest of the year, with last access half an hour before closing.

It sits inside the working Palais de Justice, so security is stricter than anywhere else on this list. Allow up to 30 minutes to get through on a busy day. Glass bottles, sharp objects, motorbike helmets and bulky bags are refused, and pushchairs are not allowed in the upper chapel. It is free on the first Sunday of January, February, March, November and December.

The Conciergerie is a two-minute walk away, costs €13, and a combined ticket with Sainte-Chapelle is €30 standard or €23 for EEA visitors, sold through the CMN. Marie Antoinette was held there before her execution and the HistoPad tablet reconstructs the medieval hall convincingly. Forty-five minutes for the chapel, an hour for the Conciergerie.

Musée d’Orsay

€16, closed Mondays, and the museum I would choose over the Louvre if I only had one. The Impressionist floor at the top of a converted Beaux-Arts railway station is the greatest concentration of Impressionist painting anywhere, and the building itself, with its great clock face looking out over the Seine, does half the work.

It runs Tuesday to Sunday from 09:30 to 18:00, with a late opening until 21:45 on Thursdays and a reduced €12 rate after 18:00 that evening. That is a rare discount at a headline museum, and worth eating late for. Two to three hours.

Versailles

Technically a day trip, practically unmissable. The Passport ticket is €35 in high season, which runs 1 April to 31 October, and €25 in low season, with EEA visitors paying €32 and €22 respectively. It is the only ticket that gives you a fixed timed slot for the Palace itself, and it covers the Estate of Trianon and the gardens including the Musical Fountains Show when it is running.

The 2026 fountain programme runs Saturdays and Sundays from 4 April to 1 November, with Musical Gardens Tuesday to Friday and the Grandes Eaux Nocturnes on Saturday evenings from 6 June to 19 September. A discounted late-admission Passport is €18 in low season from 15:00 and €28 in high season from 16:00, which is a good move if you would rather have the gardens at golden hour than the Hall of Mirrors at noon.

The gardens are free in low season. In high season on musical days they cost €15. The Estate of Trianon alone is €15, and it is where I send people who have already done the Palace once. Closed Mondays. Book at billetterie.chateauversailles.fr and take RER C to Versailles Château Rive Gauche, covered by the flat regional fare.

The museums and monuments worth your time after the two big ones

Paris has around 130 museums and the second tier is where the city stops feeling like a queue. Most of what follows is calmer than the Louvre and several entries are better.

Musée de l’Orangerie

€12.50, closed Tuesdays, and the cheapest transcendent hour in the city. Monet’s Water Lilies fill two oval rooms that were designed around them, lit from above, with benches. Downstairs there is a Walter-Guillaume collection of Cézanne, Soutine and Renoir that would be a headline museum anywhere else. One hour, and go first thing.

Musée Rodin

Around €14, closed Mondays. An 18th-century mansion with a rose garden, and The Thinker, The Kiss and The Gates of Hell arranged so you can walk around them in daylight. It is the least stressful museum in Paris and the garden alone justifies the ticket on a warm day. Ninety minutes.

Musée Picasso

In a restored Marais mansion, €16, closed Mondays. The deepest Picasso holdings in the world, largely because the family settled inheritance tax in artwork, so it traces the whole arc rather than cherry-picking the famous years. Ninety minutes, and it pairs perfectly with a Marais walk.

Musée Marmottan Monet

Out in the 16th, €14, closed Mondays, and consistently the least crowded serious museum in Paris. It holds Impression, Sunrise, the painting that gave Impressionism its name, along with the largest Monet holdings in the world. It is not on the Paris Museum Pass, which is part of why it stays quiet.

Musée de l’Armée and Napoleon’s Tomb

€17. Under the golden dome of Les Invalides, Napoleon lies in a red porphyry sarcophagus inside six nested coffins, on a scale that tells you a great deal about 19th-century France. The military history galleries either side are better than you expect, particularly the Second World War rooms. Two hours.

Hôtel de la Marine

On Place de la Concorde, €17, and rarely busy. It is an 18th-century state interior restored to the point of theatre, with a loggia looking straight down the square towards the obelisk. Ninety minutes, and an unusual choice for a second or third trip.

Grand Palais

Reopened in June 2025 after a €466 million restoration that took four years, and the glass nave is worth going in for on its own. Programming in 2026 has been strong: a Matisse retrospective of around 200 works ran from March to July, Hilma af Klint until 30 August, and “Cezanne et nous” opens on 23 September. Exhibition pricing varies by show, so check the current listing before you go rather than trusting a fixed figure.

Palais Garnier

€25 for a self-guided visit, €15 for EEA citizens and residents, €20 for 13 to 25 year olds and free under 12. A guided tour is €35. The Grand Staircase, the gilded foyer and the Chagall ceiling in the auditorium are the point, and the building is the reason the Phantom of the Opera has a plot. Access to the auditorium depends on rehearsals, so it is not guaranteed on any given day. One hour.

The Catacombs

€31 full rate, €25 reduced, €15 for children 8 to 17, free under 8, audio guide included. The remains of about six million Parisians, moved into disused limestone quarries from the 1780s onwards, arranged in walls of femurs and skulls along about 1.5 kilometres of ossuary.

The booking is the hard part. Entry is timed and mandatory through catacombes.paris.fr, there are no walk-up sales, and tickets are released only seven days ahead. Set an alarm. It is 131 steps down and 112 back up, it stays at about 14°C year-round, and it is not suitable for anyone with claustrophobia or mobility limits. One hour underground.

Views over Paris, now that two of the famous ones have closed

Paris has lost two of its best-known viewpoints inside three years. The Montparnasse Tower deck closed permanently on 31 March 2026 and the rooftop at the Grande Arche de la Défense has been shut since April 2023. Four are below, two of them free. The Eiffel Tower and the Notre-Dame towers, both covered further up, are the other two worth climbing.

The Arc de Triomphe rooftop

The best paid view in Paris, for one reason: the Eiffel Tower is in it. From the tower itself, the tower is not. €22 from 1 April to 30 September, €16 from 1 October to 31 March, and €16 on Wednesdays in high season, which is a useful saving if your dates are flexible.

It is 284 steps to the terrace. A lift exists but is reserved for visitors who need it and cannot be booked in advance, and as of August 2026 it was under maintenance with terrace access by stairs only. Opening runs 10:00 to 23:00 from Wednesday to Monday and 11:00 to 23:00 on Tuesdays in summer, closing half an hour earlier in winter, with last admission 45 minutes before. Free on the first Sunday of January, February, March, November and December.

Never cross the roundabout on foot. There is an underpass from the Champs-Élysées side and twelve avenues of Parisian drivers between you and it. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier sits beneath the arch outside the paid area, and the flame is rekindled every evening at 18:30.

The Sacré-Coeur dome

The basilica is free. The dome and crypt cost €8 for ages 16 and over and €5 for under-16s, and it is not covered by the Paris Museum Pass. About 280 steps up a spiral to the second-highest point in the city, and the only place you get Montmartre’s rooftops in the foreground. Thirty minutes.

The Institut du Monde Arabe rooftop

Free, and the answer to “where do I get a good view without paying”. Take the lift to the ninth floor of Jean Nouvel’s building on the Left Bank for a terrace looking straight at the back of Notre-Dame and along the Seine. It is not signposted from the street. The photo-sensitive mashrabiya facade on the way up is worth the trip by itself.

The Galeries Lafayette dome and rooftop

Also free, and the one most people walk straight past. The Art Nouveau stained-glass dome above the shop floor on boulevard Haussmann dates from 1912, and the escalators keep going up to a terrace with an unobstructed view over the Opéra roof to the Eiffel Tower. No ticket, no queue, and a bar if you want one.

Walk these five neighbourhoods and you will understand the city

Paris is 105 square kilometres and almost entirely walkable in sections. The monuments tell you what France wanted to be. The districts tell you what it is.

Montmartre, before nine in the morning

Place du Tertre at 11:00 in July is a hard sell: portrait artists, coach parties, €7 espressos. The same square at 08:00 is a village on a hill with a bakery queue. Go early, take the funicular or the stairs up to Sacré-Coeur, then walk down through rue Lepic and rue des Abbesses instead of straight back to the metro. The Wall of Love in Square Jehan Rictus is two minutes from Abbesses station and free.

Le Marais

The 3rd and 4th arrondissements are the part of Paris that Haussmann never flattened, which is why the streets bend. Place des Vosges is the oldest planned square in the city and free to sit in. Rue des Rosiers does the best falafel in Paris and the queue is part of it. The Marché des Enfants Rouges, open since 1615, is the oldest covered market in the city and the cheapest good lunch in the district. The Musée Picasso and the Musée Carnavalet are both here.

The Latin Quarter

Rue Mouffetard for the street market, the Sorbonne for the students, and the Arènes de Lutèce, a Roman amphitheatre hidden behind an apartment block where old men play boules. The Panthéon square is the centrepiece. Shakespeare and Company sits at the river end, opposite Notre-Dame, and browsing costs nothing.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés

The oldest church in Paris, founded in the 6th century, and the cafés where Sartre and de Beauvoir made their names and now charge accordingly. Go for the streets rather than the terraces: rue de Buci for the market, rue Jacob for the antique dealers, and the Jardin du Luxembourg five minutes south.

Canal Saint-Martin

Iron footbridges, a lock every few hundred metres, and at 19:00 on a warm evening a few hundred Parisians sitting on the quay with a bottle and a paper bag of cheese. It is the least touristic entry on this list and the one I would send you to on a second trip.

The Seine, and the fact that you can now swim in it

A river cruise

The one piece of organised tourism I recommend without reservation, because the monuments were built to be seen from the water. Bateaux Mouches charges about €17 booked online for the standard sightseeing loop. Vedettes du Pont Neuf runs smaller boats from the tip of the Île de la Cité for around €15. The Batobus is a hop-on hop-off river ferry with nine stops and functions more as transport than sightseeing; its 2026 tariffs are quoted inconsistently across sources, so check on the day. Go after dark if you can. The Eiffel Tower sparkles for five minutes on the hour and the bridges are lit.

Swimming in the Seine

This is the genuinely new one. After a €1.4 billion clean-up, Paris opened public swimming in the Seine for the first time since 1923. From 4 July 2026 the city ran eleven free supervised swimming sites, three of them on the river itself: Bercy in the 12th, Bras Marie near the Île Saint-Louis in the 4th, and Bras de Grenelle in the 15th. Water quality is tested daily and lifeguards are on duty. It is free, it is seasonal, and it is the most Parisian thing you can do in August.

Paris Plages

From 4 July to 31 August the city trucks sand onto the riverbanks and the Bassin de la Villette and adds deckchairs, misting fountains and pop-up bars. Free, faintly absurd, and genuinely pleasant at 19:00.

Nine more things worth your time

Père Lachaise Cemetery

Free, 44 hectares, and the most famous permanent address list in Europe: Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Édith Piaf, Jim Morrison, Molière. Take the printed map at the gate, because the signage inside is close to useless and the hills are steeper than they look.

Jardin du Luxembourg

The chairs are free, and nobody will move you on. Toy sailboats on the pond, a marionette theatre, and the Palais du Luxembourg where the French Senate sits. The best picnic ground in central Paris and the correct answer to a spare hour in the 6th.

The Tuileries and the Olympic Cauldron

Between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde, and free. The Olympic Cauldron that rose over the city during the 2024 Games returns to the Tuileries each summer, running 21 June to 14 September in 2026, with the Cauldron area accessible from 10:00.

The bouquinistes

The green boxes of second-hand books along both banks run for about three kilometres and were added to France’s national inventory of intangible cultural heritage in 2019. The riverbanks they sit on are UNESCO-listed. Mostly postcards and reprints now, but browsing is free and the setting is unbeatable.

Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen

Seven hectares of flea market at Porte de Clignancourt, twelve separate markets and around 2,000 dealers, and the largest antiques market in the world. Saturday morning is the time. Bring cash and low expectations of your own restraint.

Palais-Royal

Ninety seconds from the Louvre and almost silent: an arcaded garden square with 260 striped Buren columns in the courtyard that children cannot leave alone. Free, and the best place in the 1st to sit down.

Pont Alexandre III at sunset

The most ornate bridge in Paris, gilded cherubs and art nouveau lamps, built for the 1900 World’s Fair. Free to stand on, and the view towards Les Invalides is the one Paris uses in its own advertising.

A proper market morning

Marché Bastille on Thursday and Sunday is the biggest. Marché d’Aligre in the 12th is the one Parisians actually use, with a covered hall and a flea market attached. Buy a baguette, a wedge of Comté and a punnet of something, and eat it in the nearest garden. That is a better Paris lunch than most restaurants will sell you for €30.

Disney Adventure World

If you are travelling with children, the second park at Disneyland Paris was rebranded and relaunched on 29 March 2026 as Adventure World, with World of Frozen, a Tangled-inspired attraction, fifteen new dining locations and a new nighttime show. It is 40 minutes on RER A. It is a full day and it is not cheap, but it is a different park from the one you may remember.

Is the Paris Museum Pass worth it? Here is the actual arithmetic

The pass costs €85 for 48 hours, €105 for 96 hours and €125 for 144 hours. Validity is counted by the hour from your first visit, not by calendar day, which matters more than people expect: a pass activated at 14:00 on Friday dies at 14:00 on Sunday. It covers more than 50 museums and monuments in Paris and the Paris region, one entry each.

The operator says you start saving from the fourth visit on the two-day pass. That is broadly true, and the arithmetic on a realistic two-day run looks like this using the reference prices the pass itself publishes.

Two-day itinerary	Non-EEA visitor pays	EEA visitor pays
Louvre	€32	€22
Musée d’Orsay	€16	€16
Sainte-Chapelle	€22	€16
Arc de Triomphe	€22	€22
Total paid separately	€92	€76
Two-day pass	€85	€85
Verdict	Pass saves €7	Pass loses you €9

The asymmetry is the part worth reading twice. The pass is priced at one rate for everyone, but since January 2026 the tickets it replaces are not. If you hold an EEA passport, the two-tier pricing has quietly moved your break-even from four visits to five, and on a typical two-day sightseeing run the pass now costs you money. Non-EEA visitors doing four or more paid sites in 48 hours are still ahead, and the margin widens fast: add the Notre-Dame Towers at €16 and the Musée Rodin at about €14 and the four-day pass at €105 is comfortably worth it.

What the pass does not cover matters just as much. Officially, temporary exhibitions are excluded, and free entry is not guaranteed where a site imposes mandatory reservation, security screening or capped numbers. In practice the notable exclusions are the Eiffel Tower, the Catacombs, the Palais Garnier, the Sacré-Coeur dome, the Grand Palais, the Musée Marmottan Monet and the Musée Jacquemart-André. It buys you no public transport, no river cruise and no hop-on hop-off bus. And it does not let you skip security queues at Versailles or the Eiffel Tower, which is where the real waiting happens.

My rule: buy it if you are not from the EEA and you are doing four or more of the big paid sites in two days. Otherwise buy singles and spend the difference on lunch.

Getting around Paris in 2026

The fare system was rebuilt in 2025 and the change is unambiguously good for visitors. One flat fare now takes you anywhere in the region on rail.

Ticket	Price 2026	What it covers
Metro / Train / RER single	€2.55	One flat fare anywhere in Île-de-France, 2 hours, no leaving the network
Metro / Train / RER single, reduced	€1.30	Children 4–9 and other eligible passengers
Bus / Tram single	€2.05	Separate ticket from the metro one since 2025
Navigo Easy card	€2 card fee	Reusable plastic card you load tickets onto, or use your phone instead
Navigo Jour, all zones	€12.30	Unlimited day travel including the airports
Paris Region <> Airports ticket	€14 (€7 reduced)	Any station to CDG or Orly by RER, metro, train or Orlyval, including airport to airport
Paris Visite, zones 1–5	€30.60 / €45.40 / €63.80 / €78.00	1, 2, 3 and 5 days. Almost always beaten by Navigo Jour
Taxi, CDG to Right Bank	€56 fixed	Regulated flat fare, day or night, no luggage surcharge
Taxi, CDG to Left Bank	€65 fixed	Same regulated scheme
Taxi, Orly to Left Bank	€36 fixed	Cheapest airport taxi run in the city
Taxi, Orly to Right Bank	€45 fixed	Fixed both directions

Buy a Navigo Easy card for €2 at any staffed station and load fares onto it, or use your phone. Paper magnetic tickets have not been sold since 1 November 2025. Note that the airport ticket cannot sit on the same medium as an ordinary Metro-Train-RER ticket, though it can share with a Bus-Tram one, which is the kind of detail that catches people out at the gate.

If you are doing three or more rail journeys in a day, the €12.30 Navigo Jour beats singles. Paris Visite is priced well above it and is almost never the right answer. For airport runs, the €14 rail ticket beats a €56 taxi until you are four people with luggage, at which point the taxi wins on both money and sanity. French taxis must accept card payment.

Central Paris is small. Notre-Dame to the Eiffel Tower is about an hour on foot along the river and one of the better hours you will spend. I take the metro when I am crossing the city and walk when I am not. For a wider view of moving between European cities, our guide to getting around Europe and the detail on train travel in Europe cover the rail passes and the border logistics.

When to go: Paris month by month

September is the best month in Paris and it is not particularly close. It is the driest month of the year at 51 millimetres, has the fewest rainy days at six, averages a high of 20.9°C, and the city has come back from its August holidays so the good restaurants are open. April and May are the other window.

Month	Avg high (°C)	Rain (mm)	Rainy days	Sun (hrs/day)	My verdict
January	6.9	57	9	3.1	Cheapest month. Short days, but the Louvre at 09:00 in January is a different museum.
February	8.1	52	8	–	Still quiet, still cheap. Half-term crowds at the Eiffel Tower only.
March	11.6	53	8	–	The gardens start. Prices have not caught up yet.
April	15.2	56	9	–	One of the two best months. Blossom, workable temperatures, manageable queues.
May	18.6	69	9	–	Glorious, but the wettest of the spring months and full of public holidays.
June	22.1	63	8	–	Long evenings, Fête de la Musique on the 21st, crowds building fast.
July	24.2	60	8	10.0	Sunniest month, and the most crowded. Heat closures are now routine.
August	24.0	60	7	–	Parisians leave, small shops shut, tourists fill the gap. Hot and slightly hollow.
September	20.9	51	6	–	The best month in Paris. Driest, fewest rainy days, warm, and the city is back at work.
October	16.4	65	8	–	Beautiful light, thinning crowds, museum season starting properly.
November	10.7	64	9	–	Grey, cheap, and the first Sundays are free at the monuments.
December	7.5	70	10	–	Wettest month of the year, but Christmas lights on the Champs-Élysées and a secondary crowd peak.

Two caveats worth taking seriously. First, August: Parisians leave, and a lot of small shops, neighbourhood restaurants and smaller museums close with them, so the city can feel simultaneously crowded and hollowed out. Second, heat. This is now an operational issue rather than a comfort one. On 14 August 2026 the Arc de Triomphe closed at 14:30 because of the temperature and the Eiffel Tower site was showing 40°C; Sainte-Chapelle had a heat-related early closure on 29 July. If you visit in July or August, do the outdoor and rooftop attractions before noon and treat the afternoon as museum time.

December is the wettest month at 70 millimetres and the second crowd peak, because of the Christmas lights on the Champs-Élysées and the markets. January and February are the cheapest and quietest, and a January Louvre at opening time is a different museum altogether. Our wider guide to the best time to visit Europe puts Paris in context against the rest of the continent.

Paris is not short of company. Greater Paris took nearly 50 million visitors in 2025, including a record 23.2 million international arrivals, up 3% on 2024 and 4% above 2019. The Louvre alone did 9 million. Booking ahead is not optional at the headline sights any more.

What Paris actually costs in 2026

Paris is expensive, but less uniformly than its reputation suggests. The attractions are the controllable part, and if you use the free list above you can have a superb three days on very little.

The tourist tax is charged per person, per night, on top of your room rate, and Paris applies a 200% Île-de-France regional mobility surcharge on the base figure, which is why the numbers are higher than in most French cities. Under-18s are exempt, and the total is capped at €100 per person per month.

Accommodation category	Tourist tax per person, per night
Palace	€15.93
5-star hotel	€11.70
4-star hotel	€8.45
3-star hotel	€5.53
Unclassified and short-let	5% of the nightly rate per person, capped at €15.93

Roughly, per person per day excluding accommodation: €35 to €50 if you are picnicking, walking and using the free list with one paid attraction; €80 to €110 for a comfortable day with two paid sites, a sit-down lunch and a decent dinner; €180 and up if you are eating properly in the evening and drinking wine you chose rather than wine that was cheapest. A coffee standing at the bar is €2 to €3; the same coffee at a table in Saint-Germain is €7 to €9, and the price difference is legally required to be displayed. Our Europe on a budget guide and the cheapest places to travel in Europe both put those numbers alongside the rest of the continent.

How many days do you need in Paris?

Three full days is the honest minimum for a first visit and five is where it stops feeling rushed. Here is how I would spend them.

One day. Sainte-Chapelle at 09:00, Notre-Dame on a booked slot at 10:30, walk the Île de la Cité and cross to the Left Bank, lunch in the Latin Quarter, Musée d’Orsay in the afternoon, then the Eiffel Tower at dusk. You will have seen the spine of the city.

Two days. Add the Louvre on the second morning, the Tuileries and Palais-Royal at lunch, the Arc de Triomphe rooftop late afternoon, and a Seine cruise after dark.

Three days. Give day three to Montmartre before nine, the Sacré-Coeur dome, then the Marais in the afternoon with the Musée Picasso and Place des Vosges. Our 3-day Paris itinerary breaks that down hour by hour.

Five days. Day four is Versailles, all of it, leaving early. Day five is the second-tier museums, the Orangerie and the Marmottan, Père Lachaise or Canal Saint-Martin, and whatever you have been walking past and wondering about.

A week or more. Start using Paris as a base. Giverny, Chartres, Reims and Fontainebleau are all under 90 minutes, and the wider France itinerary shows how Paris fits with the Loire, Normandy and the south.

Things to do in Paris by traveller type

First-timers. Do the six unmissables, book everything, and resist the urge to add a seventh thing to each day. Paris rewards depth. Our guide to the best places to visit in Europe for the first time makes the same argument at continental scale.

Returning visitors. Marmottan, Hôtel de la Marine, Canal Saint-Martin, Marché d’Aligre, the Institut du Monde Arabe roof and a day at the Estate of Trianon rather than the Palace. Then get on a train: Normandy and the Loire Valley are both easy from Paris.

Families. Under-18s are free at every national museum and monument here, which changes the maths completely, though the Eiffel Tower, the Catacombs and the Sacré-Coeur dome charge reduced child rates rather than free entry. Luxembourg Gardens with the toy boats, the Buren columns at Palais-Royal, the Batobus as a boat rather than a tour, Disney Adventure World for a full day, and the Eiffel Tower stairs if the children are old enough to enjoy conquering something. Skip the Catacombs. Our Europe with kids guide has more on pacing.

Art lovers. Orsay, Orangerie, Marmottan and Rodin in two days will do more for you than the Louvre alone. Buy singles rather than a pass and check the Grand Palais programme, which has been the strongest in the city since it reopened.

Budget travellers. Twenty-three of the forty-two things on this list are free. Add the first Sunday of the month from November to March at the national museums, the Louvre free on the first Friday evening outside July and August, and picnic lunches from a market. See backpacking Europe for the wider approach.

Solo travellers. Paris is one of the easiest cities in Europe to be alone in. Eat at the bar, take the 09:00 museum slots when nobody is there, and read our solo travel in Europe guide before you go.

Visitors with limited mobility. Be warned that several of the best things here are not accessible. The Eiffel Tower summit and stairs are not, the Conciergerie is not equipped for reduced-mobility access, the Catacombs involve 243 steps in total, and the Arc de Triomphe lift is reserved for those who need it and was out of service in August 2026. The Louvre, Orsay, Orangerie and Versailles Palace are all good.

Eleven mistakes I watch people make in Paris

Booking the Louvre for a Tuesday or Orsay for a Monday. The two great museums close on different days and it catches somebody out every week. Louvre closed Tuesday; Orsay, Rodin, Picasso, Marmottan and Quai Branly closed Monday; the Orangerie closed Tuesday.

Buying a Notre-Dame ticket. Entry is free. Reserve your slot on notredamedeparis.fr and nowhere else.

Planning around Montparnasse Tower or the Pompidou. Both are shut. Substitute the Arc de Triomphe rooftop and the Grand Palais.

Not carrying your EEA passport or residence permit. It is worth €10 at the Louvre, €6 at Sainte-Chapelle, €10 at Palais Garnier and €3 at Versailles, and under-26s from the EEA get in free entirely. Nobody will apply it retroactively.

Leaving the Catacombs to the last minute. Tickets are released seven days ahead and there are no walk-up sales. If you want it, diarise the release.

Doing rooftops in the afternoon in July. Heat closures are now routine at the Arc de Triomphe and Sainte-Chapelle. Outdoors before noon, museums after.

Underestimating security queues. Sainte-Chapelle sits inside a working courthouse and can take 30 minutes to enter on a busy day. A museum pass does nothing for that queue.

Crossing the Arc de Triomphe roundabout on foot. Use the underpass. Twelve avenues converge there and it has no lane markings.

Eating on a monument square. Walk three streets in any direction and the same lunch costs half as much and tastes better. The Marché des Enfants Rouges and Marché d’Aligre are both better than anything within sight of a landmark.

Trying to do the Louvre properly. You cannot. Pick two wings, walk out satisfied, and come back another year.

Carrying a wallet in a back pocket. Paris pickpocketing is organised, skilled and concentrated in exactly three places: metro line 1, the RER B from the airport, and the Trocadéro and Eiffel Tower approach. Nothing violent, but you will not feel it. Front pockets, zipped bag on your front in a crowd, and be politely uninterested in anyone who approaches you with a clipboard or a gold ring.

Frequently asked questions about things to do in Paris

What is the number one attraction in Paris?
By visitor numbers it is Notre-Dame de Paris, which drew around 11 million people in 2025, its first full year after reopening, ahead of the Louvre at 9 million. By recognition, the Eiffel Tower. Notre-Dame is free; the Eiffel Tower starts at €14.80 on the stairs.

What are the three most famous attractions in Paris?
The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Notre-Dame. Add Sainte-Chapelle and the Musée d’Orsay and you have the shortlist that no first visit should skip.

How many days do you need in Paris?
Three full days covers the essentials without a forced march. Five lets you add Versailles and the second-tier museums. Two is possible but you will be choosing between the Louvre and Orsay.

Is three days enough for Paris?
Yes, for a first visit. Three days gets you five of the six unmissable sights, one neighbourhood walk and an evening on the river. It does not get you Versailles, which is a full day on its own.

What is the best month to visit Paris?
September. It is the driest month at 51 millimetres and has the fewest rainy days at six, it averages a high of 20.9°C, and the city is back at work after August. April and May are the spring equivalent.

What is the cheapest time to visit Paris?
January and February, followed by mid-November to mid-December before the Christmas rush. Expect highs of 6.9°C in January and about three hours of sun a day, but also the shortest queues of the year and the lowest hotel rates.

Is the Paris Museum Pass worth it?
It depends on your passport. At €85 for two days, it pays for itself from about the fourth paid site if you are visiting from outside the EEA. If you hold an EEA passport, the discounted entry rates introduced in January 2026 push your break-even to roughly five sites, and on a typical two-day itinerary you would be better off buying singles.

Is Notre-Dame free to visit, and do you need a reservation?
Free, every day of the year during opening hours. You should reserve a free timed slot on the cathedral’s own website. No third-party platform is authorised to sell tickets and anything you pay for is fraudulent. The separate tower climb is a genuine paid visit at €16.

Which Paris museums are closed on Mondays and which on Tuesdays?
Closed Mondays: Musée d’Orsay, Musée Rodin, Musée Picasso, Musée Marmottan Monet and Musée du Quai Branly. Closed Tuesdays: the Louvre, the Musée de l’Orangerie and the Musée national Eugène-Delacroix. Sainte-Chapelle, the Conciergerie, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower open every day, subject to a handful of annual closures.

What can you do in Paris for free?
Twenty-three things on this list cost nothing, including Notre-Dame, the Sacré-Coeur basilica, Père Lachaise, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Institut du Monde Arabe rooftop and swimming in the Seine in summer. Add the first Sunday of the month from November to March at the national museums, the Louvre free after 18:00 on the first Friday outside July and August, and free entry for all under-18s and EEA under-26s year-round.

Can you swim in the Seine?
Yes, in summer, legally, for the first time in 102 years. Paris opened eleven free supervised swimming sites from 4 July 2026, three of them on the Seine itself at Bercy, Bras Marie and Bras de Grenelle, with daily water-quality testing and lifeguards.

Is Paris expensive to visit?
Moderately, and it is controllable. Budget €35 to €50 a day per person excluding your room if you picnic and use the free list, €80 to €110 for a comfortable day with two paid attractions and a proper dinner. Accommodation and restaurants are the expensive part; transport at €2.55 a journey is not.

What is the tourist tax in Paris?
It is charged per person, per night, on top of your room rate, and ranges from about €5.53 for a three-star hotel to €15.93 for a palace, with 2026 rates in force since 1 January. Unclassified accommodation is charged at 5% of the nightly rate per person, capped at €15.93. Under-18s are exempt.

Do I need an ETIAS to visit Paris?
Not yet. ETIAS has been delayed again; the earliest realistic launch is now around April 2027, followed by a transition period of at least six months during which travellers without one will not be refused entry. The Entry/Exit System is a separate scheme and has been fully operational across the Schengen area since April 2026, which has lengthened queues at some borders. Our Schengen visa and ETIAS guide tracks the current position.

How do I get from the airport into Paris?
One €14 Paris Region to Airports ticket covers CDG and Orly from any station in the region, by RER, metro, suburban train or Orlyval, including airport to airport. Roissybus and Orlybus have both been withdrawn. Regulated flat-fare taxis are €56 from CDG to the Right Bank, €65 to the Left Bank, €45 from Orly to the Right Bank and €36 to the Left Bank, fixed day and night with no luggage surcharge.

Final thoughts

The thing I would most like you to take from this page is the shape of a good Paris day rather than the list itself. One booked attraction in the morning, when the light is good and the rooms are empty. A long lunch somewhere three streets from anything famous. An afternoon on foot through one district, with no destination. Then something on the river as it gets dark.

Do that three times and you will have seen more of Paris than someone who ticked off nine monuments and remembers the queues. The city has been rewarding unhurried people for four hundred years and it has not changed its mind.

A note on what this guide does not cover. I have deliberately left out restaurant recommendations, because the good ones change faster than any page can track and the reliable ones are already famous. I have left out hotels for the same reason. And there are excellent museums here I have not included, the Carnavalet and the Quai Branly among them, not because they are lesser but because a list of forty-two already asks a lot of one trip. I have also left out the Moulin Rouge and the other cabarets: they are a genuine Paris institution, but 2026 pricing varies so much by package and seat that I could not source a figure I would stand behind, so I would rather say nothing than quote you a number I have not checked.

Paris is the anchor of any French trip and one of the two or three cities that define European travel. If you are building a longer route, our complete France travel guide is the place to start, and the best cities to visit in Europe shows where it sits alongside Rome, Barcelona and the rest.

Keep planning your trip to France

• France travel guide: the full country overview, region by region
• Paris itinerary: 3 days: this list turned into an hour-by-hour plan
• Best places to visit in France: where to go after the capital
• Best time to visit France: month-by-month across the whole country
• Provence travel guide and the south of France
• Nice and the Côte d’Azur
• Bordeaux and French wine country
• Things to do in Rome and things to do in Barcelona for the obvious comparisons
• Europe itinerary ideas and European city breaks
• Europe travel tips, packing list and how to plan a trip to Europe
• Most beautiful places in Europe and the Europe bucket list
• Where to stay in Europe and European food by country
• European river cruises if the Seine gave you ideas
• Europe in summer and Europe in winter
• Christmas markets in Europe if December is your window
• Best places to visit in Europe, the master list

Hannah Brooks has spent fifteen years travelling, living and writing across Europe, from the Arctic tip of Norway to the south of Sicily. She has planned hundreds of European itineraries for readers and is Senior Europe Editor at EuropeanTourism.org.

Photo credits

All images are used under the licences shown. Thank you to the photographers.

• The Eiffel Tower above the Champ de Mars, the most visited of all the things to do in Paris · Photo: Pierre Blaché from Paris, France (CC0) via Wikimedia Commons
• The glass pyramid lit at night in the courtyard of the Louvre, one of the top things to do in Paris · Photo: cocoparisienne (CC0) via Wikimedia Commons
• The west facade and towers of Notre-Dame de Paris seen from the quays of the Seine · Photo: Sam valadi / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• The rose window and stained glass of the upper chapel at Sainte-Chapelle in Paris · Photo: Gerda Arendt (CC0) via Wikimedia Commons
• Gilded cherubs and painted ceiling detail inside the Palace of Versailles · Photo: Jebulon (CC0) via Wikimedia Commons
• The vaulted nave and great clock of the Musee d’Orsay in Paris · Photo: Sandor Laza / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Chandeliers and marble balconies in the grand foyer of the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris · Photo: Gerda Arendt (CC0) via Wikimedia Commons
• Walls of stacked bones and skulls in the ossuary of the Catacombs of Paris · Photo: Diego Delso / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• The Arc de Triomphe on Place Charles de Gaulle in Paris on a clear winter day · Photo: Alexandre Prevot / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• The white domes of the Sacre-Coeur basilica above the Montmartre district of Paris · Photo: Terragio67 / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• The Art Nouveau stained-glass dome above the shop floor of Galeries Lafayette Haussmann in Paris · Photo: MrsEllacott / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• The Art Nouveau entrance to the Abbesses metro station in Montmartre, Paris · Photo: DIMSFIKAS / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• The stone arcades running around the Place des Vosges in the Marais district of Paris · Photo: GFreihalter / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• A fishmonger’s display of shellfish and prawns on Rue Mouffetard in the Latin Quarter of Paris · Photo: ctj71081 / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• A sightseeing boat passing along the Seine in central Paris at dusk · Photo: bigup21 / CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Children sailing toy boats on the pond in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris · Photo: Guilhem Vellut from Paris, France / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• The bronze and gilt cartouche on the Pont Alexandre III above the Seine in Paris · Photo: Jebulon (CC0) via Wikimedia Commons
• The terrace of the Cafe de Flore in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, Paris · Café de Flore terrace, Paris · Photo: Alexemanuel / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
• A traditional Parisian carousel, one of the easiest free things to do in Paris with children · Photo: RosezZen (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons
• The Eiffel Tower seen looking up from the riverside walk in Paris · Photo: Wichien W (CC0) via Wikimedia Commons