Smart Self-Managed Tours

City guide · France

Paris

A photograph of Paris
Photograph · Yann Caradec from Paris, France · CC BY-SA 2.0

Paris is 105.4 km² holding 2,047,602 people, wrapped in twenty arrondissements that spiral outward from the Louvre. Almost everything a visitor comes for is inside that spiral, and most of it is walkable. The Seine cuts the city in two and everything is described in relation to it. The Right Bank to the north holds the commerce and the great institutions; the Left Bank to the south holds the universities and the bookshops. Between them the Île de la Cité and the Île Saint-Louis are where the city started.

Practical information
Language spoken
French
English is understood in tourist districts and rarely outside them
Dialling code
+33 1
Paris and the Île-de-France; drop the leading 0 of 01 when calling from abroad
Currency
Euro (€, EUR)
Cards accepted almost everywhere; markets prefer cash
Emergency number
112
One number across the country; 15 reaches an ambulance directly
Plug type
Type C and E · 230 V
European two-pin; type E adds an earth pin in the socket
Tap water
Safe to drink
Held to the European drinking water directive

Planning a visit

Suggested stay
4–5 days
Getting around
Métro and on foot
  1. January: seasonal closure recorded
  2. February: seasonal closure recorded
  3. March: seasonal closure recorded
  4. April: recorded as a best month to visit
  5. May: recorded as a best month to visit
  6. June: recorded as a best month to visit
  7. July: no seasonality data recorded
  8. August: no seasonality data recorded — this month
  9. September: recorded as a best month to visit
  10. October: recorded as a best month to visit
  11. November: seasonal closure recorded
  12. December: seasonal closure recorded

Top things to see

Ranked by importance — sitelinks, pageviews and heritage status, not editor preference.

Filter the list

25 places match

Category

Historic monuments 1696 Museums 147 Places of worship 479 Nature sites 701 Viewpoints 27 Food and drink 147 Markets and shopping 254 Entertainment 103 Nightlife 2108 Family attractions 8 Art and culture 1881 Activities 1

Typical visit duration

Up to 1 hour 5173 1 to 2 hours 2370 Half a day or more 9

Interests

History 2324 Art 2360 Museums 2028 Nature 728 Sea and beach 701 Viewpoints 27
  1. Eiffel Tower
    01 2 hours

    Eiffel Tower

    The Eiffel Tower was built to stand for twenty years and be taken down.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  2. Notre-Dame de Paris
    02 1 hour

    Notre-Dame de Paris

    Notre-Dame is the cathedral of Paris and it burned down five years before it reopened.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 4e Arrondissement
  3. Louvre Museum
    03 3 hours

    Louvre Museum

    The Louvre is the most-visited art museum on earth and it was a fortress before it was anything else.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  4. Musée d'Orsay
    04 3 hours

    Musée d'Orsay

    The Musée d'Orsay is a railway station that outlived its trains. The Gare d'Orsay was built between 1898 and 1900 on the Left Bank for the Exposition Universelle, by Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux, in full Beaux-Arts dress.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  5. Père Lachaise Cemetery
    05 1 hr 30 min

    Père Lachaise Cemetery

    Père Lachaise is a working cemetery that became a destination because its managers marketed it.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 20e Arrondissement
  6. Seine river cruise from the Eiffel Tower
    06 1 hour

    Seine river cruise from the Eiffel Tower

    An hour on the Seine is the one piece of organised sightseeing in Paris that earns its place in a self-planned trip.

    • Must see
    • Activity
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  7. Arc de Triomphe
    07 1 hour

    Arc de Triomphe

    The Arc de Triomphe is Napoleon's victory monument and it took thirty years, by which time he was dead.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  8. Sacré-Cœur
    08 45 min

    Sacré-Cœur

    Sacré-Cœur was built as an apology. After France lost the war of 1870, Bishop Felix Fournier proposed a church as an act of national penitence, reading the defeat as divine punishment for the country's moral decline since the Revolution.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 18e Arrondissement
  9. Palais Garnier
    09 1 hr 30 min

    Palais Garnier

    The Palais Garnier is what Napoleon III's Paris looked like when it stopped pretending to be restrained. He commissioned it in 1861, Charles Garnier won the competition, and it was built from 1861 to 1875, opening on 5 January 1875.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 9e Arrondissement
  10. Sainte Chapelle
    10 45 min

    Sainte Chapelle

    Sainte-Chapelle is a reliquary the size of a building, and the relic cost more than three times what the building did.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  11. avenue des Champs-Élysées
    11 45 min

    avenue des Champs-Élysées

    The Champs-Élysées is 1.91 km long, 70 m wide, and it is a garden path that became a shopping street.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  12. Bastille
    12 20 min

    Bastille

    The Bastille is a square where a prison used to be, and the prison held seven people on the day it was stormed.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 4e Arrondissement
  13. Centre Georges Pompidou
    13 2 hours

    Centre Georges Pompidou

    The Centre Pompidou is a building turned inside out, and it is closed until 2030.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 4e Arrondissement
  14. Catacombs of Paris
    14 1 hour

    Catacombs of Paris

    The Catacombs of Paris hold roughly six million people in a former limestone quarry, moved there because the city's cemeteries had run out of room.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 14e Arrondissement
  15. Montparnasse Tower
    15 1 hour

    Montparnasse Tower

    Montparnasse Tower is a 210 m office block finished in 1973, and the reaction to it is the reason Paris has not built another skyscraper in its centre since.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 15e Arrondissement
  16. Champ de Mars
    16 45 min

    Champ de Mars

    The Champ de Mars is a parade ground that became a lawn, and the Eiffel Tower stands at one end of it.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  17. National Assembly
    17 1 hr 30 min

    National Assembly

    The Palais Bourbon is where the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament, has sat since the Revolution turned a princess's private mansion into the seat of the republic's elected chamber.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  18. Panthéon
    18 1 hour

    Panthéon

    The Panthéon was built as a church and finished just in time to stop being one.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 5e Arrondissement
  19. Élysée Palace
    19 1 hr 30 min

    Élysée Palace

    The Élysée Palace is where the President of France lives and works, and it is closed to visitors for all but one weekend a year.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  20. Les Invalides
    20 2 hr 30 min

    Les Invalides

    Les Invalides was built to house disabled soldiers and ended up housing Napoleon. Louis XIV ordered it on 24 November 1670; Libéral Bruant and Jules Hardouin-Mansart designed it, and it was completed in 1706.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  21. place de la Concorde
    21 20 min

    place de la Concorde

    The Place de la Concorde is a 7.6-hectare traffic island that was once the busiest execution ground in Europe. It is the largest public square in Paris.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  22. Grand Palais
    22 2 hours

    Grand Palais

    The Grand Palais is a glass hall built for a world's fair and never demolished. Construction began in 1897 after the Palais de l'Industrie was pulled down, and it opened on 1 May 1900 for the Exposition Universelle.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  23. Grand Mosque of Paris
    23 45 min

    Grand Mosque of Paris

    The Grand Mosque of Paris opened in 1926 as France's thanks to its Muslim soldiers, and it remains the city's central mosque a century later.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 5e Arrondissement
  24. Tuileries Garden
    24 1 hour

    Tuileries Garden

    The Tuileries is the first royal garden in Europe that let the public in, and it has outlived the palace it was built for.

    • Must see
    • Nature site
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  25. Conciergerie
    25 1 hr 15 min

    Conciergerie

    The Conciergerie was a royal palace before it was a prison, and the prison is what everyone remembers.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement

Source: OpenStreetMap contributors, Wikidata ·

Where to base yourself

District boundaries come from OSM administrative relations, so a district page holds exactly the places inside it — plus, for the islands and the coast, the nearest district by proximity.

How the city is laid out

The arrondissements spiral clockwise from the centre: the 1st sits at the Louvre and the Île de la Cité, and the numbers wind outward to the 20th. Learning that shape is the single most useful thing a first-time visitor can do, because every address in the city carries its arrondissement and the number tells you roughly where you are.

The Right Bank — north of the Seine — is the 1st through 4th at the centre, then the grand avenues of the 8th and 16th to the west and Montmartre in the 18th to the north. The Louvre, the Champs-Élysées, the Opéra and Sacré-Cœur are all Right Bank.

The Left Bank — south — is the 5th, 6th and 7th: the Latin Quarter, Saint-Germain, the Panthéon, the Musée d'Orsay and the Eiffel Tower. It is the older-feeling half and the one with the bookshops.

The Périphérique, completed in 1973, rings the whole of it. Inside is Paris; outside is the metropolitan area of 13,320,752 people across 18,940.7 km², which is a different thing.

Checked 2026-08-23

Getting around

The Métro, and then walking. Paris is small enough that the two together cover everything.

The Métro opened on 19 July 1900 during the World's Fair and now runs 16 lines — numbered 1 to 14 plus 3bis and 7bis — across 321 stations, 61 of which are interchanges. Stations sit 548 m apart on average, which is why a Métro journey of two stops is usually a walk. It carries 1.523 billion passengers a year, 4.17 million a day.

The RER extends further out into the suburbs and is what takes you to the airports and to Versailles. Châtelet–Les Halles, where five Métro lines meet three RER lines, is the largest interchange and the one to avoid at rush hour.

Single tickets and multi-use passes are both sold, and the Navigo Easy card is the contactless option.

Checked 2026-08-23

Common questions

How many days does Paris need?

Four to five. Three days covers the central monuments — the Louvre, Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Élysées — at a pace that is not punishing. A fourth adds a proper museum day, and a fifth adds Montmartre or a day out at Versailles.

How do the arrondissements work?

They spiral clockwise from the centre. The 1st is at the Louvre and the Île de la Cité and the numbers wind outward to the 20th. Every Paris address carries its arrondissement, so the number tells you roughly where something is.

What is the difference between the Right Bank and the Left Bank?

The Seine. The Right Bank to the north holds the commerce and the great institutions — the Louvre, the Champs-Élysées, the Opéra, Montmartre. The Left Bank to the south holds the universities, the Latin Quarter, the Panthéon, the Musée d'Orsay and the Eiffel Tower.

Is the Métro the best way around?

For anything over a kilometre, yes. It opened on 19 July 1900 and runs 16 lines across 321 stations, with stations 548 m apart on average — which means a two-stop journey is usually faster on foot.

When is the best time to come?

April to June and September to October. August is when Parisians leave and tourists arrive, which is the worst of both — shuttered restaurants and full museums.

How big is Paris really?

The city proper is 105.4 km² with 2,047,602 people, ringed by the Périphérique completed in 1973. The metropolitan area outside it holds 13,320,752 people across 18,940.7 km².

Turn this list into a plan

Set your days, your pace and the hours you actually want to be out. The planner works around closing days and travel time, and leaves room to eat.

Plan Paris