Chaillot Palace

What it is

The Palais de Chaillot is the curved, colonnaded building on the hill of Trocadero facing the Eiffel Tower across the Seine, built for the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques on the site of the demolished 1878 Palais du Trocadero.

It is not one museum but a building shared by four unrelated institutions in its two curved wings, and treating it as a single attraction with a single ticket is the most common mistake visitors make about it.

Its architects — Leon Azema, Jacques Carlu and Louis-Hippolyte Boileau — deliberately left a wide gap between the wings, opening the terrace onto the Eiffel Tower view rather than closing it off, which is why the terrace itself, free and outdoors, is as much a landmark as anything inside the two wings.

Checked 2026-08-24 · Source

What's inside

The east wing (Pavillon de Paris) holds the Musee national de la Marine, France's navy museum, covering shipbuilding and naval history through ship models, paintings and instruments, currently under renovation with phased reopening; check its own status before visiting.

The west wing (Pavillon de Passy) holds two institutions stacked on top of each other: the Musee de l'Homme, France's national anthropology and human-origins museum, reopened in 2015 after a full renovation, and the Cite de l'architecture et du patrimoine, a museum of French architecture built around full-scale plaster cast reproductions of cathedral portals and facades collected since the 1879 Exposition.

The Theatre National de Chaillot, a state theatre with its own separate entrance and programme of dance and drama, occupies the building's lower level beneath the terrace.

Checked 2026-08-24 · Source

How long to spend

The free terrace and the exterior view take 15-20 minutes. Each paid museum is its own commitment: allow one and a half to two hours for the Cite de l'architecture's cast galleries, and one to one and a half hours for the Musee de l'Homme.

Visiting more than one museum in the building in a single day is realistic — they share the same address but are entered and exited independently — but planning to see all of them plus attend an evening performance at the theatre is not.

Checked 2026-08-24 · Source

Season and crowds

The terrace is busiest at golden hour and after dark, when the Eiffel Tower's hourly light show is visible across the river; arriving 30-45 minutes before sunset secures a spot at the railing before the crowd peaks.

The museums inside are quietest on weekday mornings, well before the terrace crowd builds for the evening view, and the two experiences do not compete for the same time of day.

Checked 2026-08-24 · Source

Tickets

The terrace and the exterior are free and always open. Each museum sells its own ticket at its own desk and website — the Musee de l'Homme, the Cite de l'architecture et du patrimoine and the Musee de la Marine do not share a combined pass, and a ticket to one does not admit to another.

Current admission prices for each museum are not recorded here; check each institution's own site, since the four venues in this one building are run and priced independently.

Checked 2026-08-24 · Source

Getting there

Metro line 6 or 9 to Trocadero stops directly at the palace's forecourt. RER C to Champ de Mars-Tour Eiffel, on the opposite bank, is a ten-minute walk across the Pont d'Iena.

The forecourt and terrace are flat and stepped only at the edges; the museums inside are accessible, though the Musee de la Marine's renovation status affects which galleries are open at any given time.

Checked 2026-08-24 · Source

What to watch out for

The terrace is a well-known pickpocket spot precisely because everyone's attention is on the view across the river rather than on their belongings; keep bags closed and to the front.

Street vendors selling souvenirs and offering unsolicited photos are persistent on the terrace and around the fountains below it; a firm decline is normal practice here.

Confusing the four institutions is the practical trap specific to this building — a ticket bought for the Cite de l'architecture does not open the Musee de l'Homme's doors next door, and the two have separate entrances despite sharing a wing.

Checked 2026-08-24 · Source

Photography

The terrace between the two wings frames the single most photographed view of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the gap the architects left between the curved wings is deliberately sized for exactly that shot.

The gilded bronze statues along the terrace balustrade and the fountains cascading down the slope toward the Seine are the secondary subjects, and both are lit at night, which makes the terrace one of the few Paris viewpoints that works as well after dark as at sunset.

Checked 2026-08-24 · Source

Where it is

• 30 min

  1 min walk · Paris 16e Arrondissement

  jardins du Trocadéro

  • Must see
  • Nature site
• 2 hr 30 min

  2 min walk · Paris 16e Arrondissement

  Musée de l'Homme

  • Must see
  • Museum
• 1 hr 30 min

  2 min walk · Paris 16e Arrondissement

  Musée national de la Marine de Paris

  • Must see
  • Museum

External links

• View on Wikidata