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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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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 2171 1 to 2 hours 145 Half a day or more 8

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. Arc de Triomphe
    06 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
  7. Sacré-Cœur
    07 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
  8. Palais Garnier
    08 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
  9. Sainte Chapelle
    09 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
  10. avenue des Champs-Élysées
    10 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
  11. Bastille
    11 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
  12. Centre Georges Pompidou
    12 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
  13. Catacombs of Paris
    13 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
  14. Montparnasse Tower
    14 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
  15. Champ de Mars
    15 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
  16. National Assembly
    16 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
  17. Panthéon
    17 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
  18. Élysée Palace
    18 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
  19. Les Invalides
    19 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
  20. place de la Concorde
    20 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
  21. Grand Palais
    21 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
  22. Grand Mosque of Paris
    22 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
  23. Conciergerie
    23 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
  24. Petit Palais
    24 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
  25. Musée des Arts et Métiers
    25 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
  26. Luxembourg Palace
    26 20 min

    Luxembourg Palace

    The Luxembourg Palace is the French Senate, and it was built because a widowed queen was homesick for Florence.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 6e Arrondissement
  27. Jardin du Luxembourg
    27 1 hour

    Jardin du Luxembourg

    The Jardin du Luxembourg is a 23-hectare formal garden on the Left Bank, laid out from 1612 for a queen who wanted a Florentine garden in Paris and built by the French Senate, which still owns the palace at its…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 6e Arrondissement
  28. Louvre Pyramid
    28 20 min

    Louvre Pyramid

    The Louvre Pyramid is the glass entrance structure built in the museum's main courtyard in the 1980s, and it is a part of the Louvre — its main entrance and one of the more argued-over additions to central Paris …

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  29. Palais-Royal
    29 45 min

    Palais-Royal

    The Palais-Royal was a cardinal's house that became Europe's first shopping centre and then the place the Revolution started.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  30. University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne
    30 1 hour

    University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne

    Behind the gate at Place de la Sorbonne sits a university with a name older than most nations: Robert de Sorbon founded a theology college here in 1257 under the patronage of Louis IX, and the word "Sorbonne" has meant…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 5e Arrondissement
  31. La Madeleine
    31 30 min

    La Madeleine

    La Madeleine is a Greek temple in the middle of Paris, and it took seventy-nine years and several changes of mind to finish.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  32. place Vendôme
    32 20 min

    place Vendôme

    Place Vendôme is an octagon of uniform stone façades built as a single architectural composition, not a collection of separate buildings that happened to end up on the same square.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  33. Pont Neuf
    33 20 min

    Pont Neuf

    The Pont Neuf is the New Bridge and it is the oldest standing bridge in Paris, which has been the joke about it for four hundred years.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  34. Château de Vincennes
    34 1 hr 30 min

    Château de Vincennes

    Château de Vincennes is a medieval fortress with the tallest surviving keep of any in Europe, built to keep a king safe rather than to look like a palace.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 12e Arrondissement
  35. Musée de la Vie romantique
    35 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
  36. Hôtel de la Marine
    36 2 hours

    Hôtel de la Marine

    Hôtel de la Marine is a paid-ticket monument on Place de la Concorde, one of a matching pair of colonnaded palaces — its twin across the square today houses the Hôtel de Crillon — built between 1758 and 1774 to…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  37. Hôtel de Ville
    37 1 hour

    Hôtel de Ville

    The Hôtel de Ville is Paris's city hall, seat of the mayor and the city council, on the square that carries its name.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 4e Arrondissement
  38. Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine
    38 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
  39. Musée d'art moderne de Paris
    39 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
  40. Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie
    40 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
  41. Musée Rodin
    41 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
  42. Musée du quai Branly
    42 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
  43. Musée de l'Orangerie
    43 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
  44. Chapelle expiatoire
    44 30 min

    Chapelle expiatoire

    The Chapelle expiatoire is a neoclassical funerary chapel built between 1815 and 1826 on the site of the former Madeleine cemetery, where the guillotined bodies of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were buried in unmarked graves covered with quicklime in…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  45. Musée Marmottan Monet
    45 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
  46. Musée Picasso
    46 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
  47. arc de triomphe du Carrousel
    47 15 min

    arc de triomphe du Carrousel

    The Arc de triomphe du Carrousel stands in the Cour Napoleon, between the Louvre's wings and I. M.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  48. Louvre Palace
    48 3 hours

    Louvre Palace

    The Louvre Palace is the building itself: the fortress-turned-royal-residence that the Musee du Louvre now occupies.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  49. Louis Vuitton Foundation
    49 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
  50. Musée Grévin
    50 1 hr 30 min

    Musée Grévin

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

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 9e Arrondissement
  51. Chaillot Palace
    51 30 min

    Chaillot Palace

    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…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  52. Jardin des plantes
    52 1 hr 15 min

    Jardin des plantes

    The Jardin des plantes is Paris's main botanical garden and the founding site of the Museum national d'Histoire naturelle, on the Left Bank in the 5th arrondissement, between the Seine and the Austerlitz rail yards.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 5e Arrondissement
  53. Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume
    53 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
  54. Hôtel Matignon
    54 1 hour

    Hôtel Matignon

    The Hotel Matignon is the official residence and working office of the French Prime Minister, on the Rue de Varenne in the 7th arrondissement, and it is not open to the public in any ordinary sense — this is a…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  55. Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris
    55 15 min

    Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris

    The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a flat paving stone beneath the Arc de Triomphe, at the centre of Place Charles de Gaulle, marking the grave of an unidentified French soldier from the First World War.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  56. place de la République
    56 20 min

    place de la République

    Place de la Republique is a large public square straddling the 3rd, 10th and 11th arrondissements, at a junction where several of Paris's grand boulevards meet, and it functions today primarily as a civic gathering space rather than a sightseeing…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 11e Arrondissement
  57. Palais Bourbon
    57 1 hr 30 min

    Palais Bourbon

    The Palais Bourbon, on the Left Bank facing Place de la Concorde across the Seine, is the seat of the French National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament — a working legislature, not a former palace turned museum.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  58. École Militaire
    58 15 min

    École Militaire

    The Ecole Militaire is an operating French military academy, not a museum, and it is not open to the public.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  59. Luxor Obelisk
    59 10 min

    Luxor Obelisk

    The Luxor Obelisk stands at the centre of Place de la Concorde, a 3,300-year-old pink granite obelisk that once stood at the entrance to Luxor Temple in Egypt, one of a matching pair carved in the reign of Ramesses II.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  60. galerie Vivienne
    60 20 min

    galerie Vivienne

    Galerie Vivienne is a covered shopping passage, one of the best-preserved of the passages couverts that dotted central Paris in the early 19th century before department stores and Haussmann's boulevards displaced most of them.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 2e Arrondissement
  61. Jardin des serres d'Auteuil
    61 1 hour

    Jardin des serres d'Auteuil

    The Jardin des serres d'Auteuil is a municipal botanical garden built around a set of glasshouses, on the western edge of Paris beside the Bois de Boulogne.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  62. Guimet Museum
    62 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
  63. Palais de Tokyo
    63 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
  64. Arènes de Lutèce
    64 30 min

    Arènes de Lutèce

    Arenes de Lutece is the surviving Roman amphitheatre of Lutetia, built in the 1st century AD on the slope of what is now the 5th arrondissement, and it once seated an estimated 15,000 people for gladiator contests and theatre.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 5e Arrondissement
  65. Battle of Paris
    65 10 min

    Battle of Paris

    This point marks ground fought over during the Battle of Paris of 30-31 March 1814, the engagement that ended the War of the Sixth Coalition on French soil and forced Napoleon's abdication weeks later.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 18e Arrondissement
  66. Saint-Jacques Tower
    66 15 min

    Saint-Jacques Tower

    The Tour Saint-Jacques is the last surviving fragment of the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a late-Gothic parish church built between 1509 and 1523 for the guild of Paris butchers, whose market gave the church its name.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 4e Arrondissement
  67. July Column
    67 1 hour

    July Column

    The Colonne de Juillet stands at the centre of Place de la Bastille and commemorates the July Revolution of 1830 — the Trois Glorieuses, three days of fighting on 27-29 July that drove King Charles X from the throne.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 11e Arrondissement
  68. Palais de Justice
    68 20 min

    Palais de Justice

    The Palais de Justice is the historic seat of the French judiciary on the Ile de la Cite, built on the site of the medieval Palais de la Cite, the residence of the Capetian kings from the 10th century until…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  69. Pont Mirabeau
    69 15 min

    Pont Mirabeau

    Pont Mirabeau carries a road and pedestrian walkways across the Seine between the 15th and 16th arrondissements, built between 1893 and 1897 under the chief engineer Paul Rabel using a steel arch design that was, at the time, one of…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 15e Arrondissement
  70. Porte Saint-Denis
    70 10 min

    Porte Saint-Denis

    Porte Saint-Denis is a triumphal arch built in 1672 on the orders of the city of Paris to honour Louis XIV's military victories on the Rhine, in particular the crossing of the Rhine earlier that year during the Franco-Dutch War.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 10e Arrondissement
  71. Musée Carnavalet
    71 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
  72. Musée de Cluny
    72 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
  73. Maison de Balzac
    73 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
  74. Colonne Vendôme
    74 15 min

    Colonne Vendôme

    The Colonne Vendome stands at the centre of Place Vendome in the 1st arrondissement, raised between 1806 and 1810 on Napoleon's order to commemorate the victory at Austerlitz.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  75. Muséum national d'histoire naturelle
    75 2 hours

    Muséum national d'histoire naturelle

    The Museum national d'histoire naturelle is France's national natural history museum, founded in 1793 out of the royal Jardin du Roi, and it occupies several linked sites across the Jardin des Plantes in the 5th arrondissement.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 5e Arrondissement
  76. parc Montsouris
    76 1 hour

    parc Montsouris

    Parc Montsouris is a 15.5-hectare public park in the 14th arrondissement, opened in 1878 as part of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann's programme of large landscaped parks for Paris.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 14e Arrondissement
  77. pont au Change
    77 10 min

    pont au Change

    Pont au Change carries rue de Rivoli's continuation across the northern arm of the Seine, linking the Ile de la Cite -- at the Conciergerie and the Palais de Justice -- to the Right Bank at Place du Chatelet.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 4e Arrondissement
  78. Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme
    78 1 hr 30 min

    Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme

    The Musee d'art et d'histoire du Judaisme, known as the MAHJ, is France's museum of Jewish art and history, opened in 1998 in the Hotel de Saint-Aignan, a 17th-century mansion in the Marais, 3rd arrondissement.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 3e Arrondissement
  79. Musée de l'Armée
    79 2 hr 30 min

    Musée de l'Armée

    The Musee de l'Armee is France's national army museum, occupying wings of the Hotel des Invalides in the 7th arrondissement, the complex Louis XIV built in the 1670s as a hospital and retirement home for wounded soldiers.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  80. Hôtel de Crillon
    80 30 min

    Hôtel de Crillon

    Hotel de Crillon opened as a hotel in 1909, but the building itself is a 1758 royal commission: Louis XV had Ange-Jacques Gabriel build two identical stone palaces flanking the Rue Royale on the new Place de la Concorde, and…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  81. Musée de l'Homme
    81 2 hr 30 min

    Musée de l'Homme

    The Musee de l'Homme is France's national anthropology museum, and it studies one subject only: what makes a human being, told through evolution, biological diversity and culture rather than through any single region or period.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  82. Académie de la Grande Chaumière
    82 45 min

    Académie de la Grande Chaumière

    Academie de la Grande Chaumiere is an art school founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the street of the same name in Montparnasse, near the older Academie Colarossi, and it became a defining institution of the…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 6e Arrondissement
  83. Porte Saint-Martin
    83 15 min

    Porte Saint-Martin

    Porte Saint-Martin is a triumphal arch built in 1674 at the order of Louis XIV to celebrate his military victories on the Rhine and in Franche-Comte, standing at what was then a gate in the walls of Paris built under…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 10e Arrondissement
  85. Saint-Roch
    85 25 min

    Saint-Roch

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  86. Palais Galliera
    86 1 hr 30 min

    Palais Galliera

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  89. Bateau Mouche
    89 1 hr 15 min

    Bateau Mouche

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  90. Dalí Paris
    90 1 hour

    Dalí Paris

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Paris 18e Arrondissement
  95. Hôtel de Sens
    95 45 min

    Hôtel de Sens

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 4e Arrondissement
  96. Hôtel de Soubise
    96 45 min

    Hôtel de Soubise

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 3e Arrondissement
  97. Hôtel Lambert
    97 45 min

    Hôtel Lambert

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 4e Arrondissement
  98. Le Lido
    98 45 min

    Le Lido

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e 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