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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.

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25 places match
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Category

Historic monuments 1696 Museums 147 Places of worship 479 Nature sites 0 Viewpoints 0 Food and drink 1 Markets and shopping 1 Entertainment 0 Nightlife 0 Family attractions 0 Art and culture 0 Activities 0

Typical visit duration

Up to 1 hour 6 1 to 2 hours 135 Half a day or more 6

Interests

History 147 Art 0 Museums 147 Nature 0 Sea and beach 0 Viewpoints 0
  1. Louvre Museum
    01 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
  2. Musée d'Orsay
    02 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
  3. Centre Georges Pompidou
    03 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
  4. Catacombs of Paris
    04 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
  5. Grand Palais
    05 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
  6. Conciergerie
    06 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
  7. Petit Palais
    07 1 hr 30 min

    Petit Palais

    The Petit Palais was built for the 1900 World's Fair as an exhibition hall and has held the City of Paris's fine arts museum ever since.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  8. Musée des Arts et Métiers
    08 2 hours

    Musée des Arts et Métiers

    The Musée des Arts et Métiers is Europe's oldest technology museum, founded in 1794 to collect and preserve the machines and instruments of French industry, and it has occupied a former medieval priory ever since.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 3e Arrondissement
  9. Musée de la Vie romantique
    09 1 hour

    Musée de la Vie romantique

    The Musée de la Vie romantique occupies the house and studio of the painter Ary Scheffer, in a district that was the address of Romantic-era Paris rather than a stop added to it later.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 9e Arrondissement
  10. Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine
    10 2 hr 30 min

    Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine

    Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine is a museum of French architecture and heritage in the east wing of the Palais de Chaillot at Trocadéro, opened in its current form in 2007.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  11. Musée d'art moderne de Paris
    11 1 hr 30 min

    Musée d'art moderne de Paris

    Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris is the city of Paris's own museum of modern art, occupying the east wing of the Palais de Tokyo on Avenue du Président Wilson.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  12. Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie
    12 2 hr 30 min

    Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie

    Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie sits inside Parc de la Villette in the north-east of Paris and opened in 1986 inside the shell of a large, unfinished cattle-market building from the 1960s that was repurposed for the museum rather…

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 19e Arrondissement
  13. Musée Rodin
    13 2 hours

    Musée Rodin

    The Musee Rodin occupies the Hotel Biron, an eighteenth-century mansion on Rue de Varenne in the 7th arrondissement that had already passed through use as a convent school before the state let it out cheaply as artists' studios in the…

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  14. Musée du quai Branly
    14 2 hours

    Musée du quai Branly

    The Musee du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac gathers non-Western art and material culture from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas under one roof, a collection that had previously been split between the ethnographic Musee de l'Homme and the Musee…

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  15. Musée de l'Orangerie
    15 1 hr 15 min

    Musée de l'Orangerie

    The Musee de l'Orangerie sits at the western end of the Tuileries Garden, in a building put up in 1852 under Napoleon III to overwinter the garden's orange trees, a purely functional greenhouse rather than a building meant to be…

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  16. Musée Marmottan Monet
    16 1 hr 30 min

    Musée Marmottan Monet

    The Musee Marmottan Monet occupies a former hunting lodge built for the Duke of Valmy on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, bought in the late nineteenth century by the businessman Jules Marmottan and later expanded by his son…

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  17. Musée Picasso
    17 1 hr 30 min

    Musée Picasso

    The Musee Picasso occupies the Hotel Sale, a seventeenth-century mansion in the Marais built in the 1650s for Pierre Aubert de Fontenay, a salt-tax collector whose unpopular trade gave the building its nickname, sale meaning salted.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 3e Arrondissement
  18. Louis Vuitton Foundation
    18 2 hours

    Louis Vuitton Foundation

    The Fondation Louis Vuitton is a contemporary art museum in the Bois de Boulogne, commissioned by Bernard Arnault, chairman of the luxury group LVMH, and designed by the American architect Frank Gehry.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  19. Musée Grévin
    19 1 hr 30 min

    Musée Grévin

    Musée Grévin is a wax museum on Boulevard Montmartre, opened in 1882.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 9e Arrondissement
  20. Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume
    20 1 hr 15 min

    Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume

    The Jeu de Paume is a photography and moving-image gallery in the Tuileries Garden's north-west corner, in a building constructed in 1861 as a court for jeu de paume, the indoor precursor of tennis played by Napoleon III's court.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  21. Guimet Museum
    21 2 hours

    Guimet Museum

    The Musee national des Arts asiatiques - Guimet holds the largest collection of Asian art outside Asia itself, spanning Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia in one national museum.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  22. Palais de Tokyo
    22 1 hr 30 min

    Palais de Tokyo

    The Palais de Tokyo is Paris's largest centre for contemporary art, occupying the eastern wing of a building raised for the 1937 International Exposition by architects Jean-Claude Dondel, Andre Aubert, Paul Viard and Marcel Dastugue.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  23. Musée Carnavalet
    23 2 hours

    Musée Carnavalet

    Musee Carnavalet is the museum of the history of Paris, occupying two adjoining Marais mansions: the Hotel Carnavalet, built in the 16th century and remodelled by Francois Mansart in 1655, and the neighbouring Hotel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 3e Arrondissement
  24. Musée de Cluny
    24 1 hr 30 min

    Musée de Cluny

    Musee de Cluny — formally the Musee national du Moyen Age — occupies the Hotel de Cluny, a late-15th-century mansion built around 1485-1500 for the Abbots of Cluny as their Paris residence, in the Latin Quarter.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 5e Arrondissement
  25. Maison de Balzac
    25 45 min

    Maison de Balzac

    Maison de Balzac is the house where the novelist Honore de Balzac lived from 1840 to 1847, on rue Raynouard in what was then the village of Passy and is now the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 16e 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