Everything in Paris is famous and half of it needs a time slot. Five days, one area a day, planned around the closing days.
Photo: Leddso Dello, Pexels license
Paris began on an island in the Seine, the Île de la Cité, around the third century BC, when it was called Lutetia, and you can still stand on that island and see most of what came after: the cathedral begun in 1163, the king's chapel with walls of stained glass, the oldest standing bridge, a fortress that became a palace and then a museum, and an iron tower that was meant to come down after the 1889 World's Fair. No other European capital has so many places that everyone has already heard of. That is exactly the problem.
The hard part of Paris is not choosing what to see. It's that the famous places run on timed tickets, closing days and queues, and a day planned badly turns into two hours in a line for a ticket you could have booked from your hotel. This plan is built around that. Every day sticks to one part of the city, because the real cost in Paris is moving between sights, and no big museum falls on its closing day. Five days is the number that works: four for the center, one for Versailles. It's a full plan, and day two is the heaviest.
Day one is the Île de la Cité and the Latin Quarter, day two the Louvre, the Marais and the Tuileries, day three the Left Bank from the Musée d'Orsay to the Eiffel Tower, day four Montmartre and the Arc de Triomphe, and day five Versailles. Start on a Tuesday if you can. The Louvre and the Orangerie are closed on Tuesdays, Orsay and Versailles on Mondays, and Tuesday to Saturday dodges every one of them. If you land on a Monday, do day four first, since Montmartre has no closing day, then days one, two, three and five. For the bigger picture of the country, see France.
Every stop from the plan below, colored by day. Pick a day to see its route.
The reopened cathedral and the royal chapel, then the Left Bank: Panthéon, the Luxembourg Gardens and a bookshop at dusk.
A morning at the Louvre, a Marais afternoon of falafel, a royal square and ice cream, then the Tuileries and Palais-Royal at dusk.
Impressionists in a railway station, the oldest church in Paris, Napoleon's tomb, then the Eiffel Tower at dusk.
Sacré-Cœur, painters' squares and a vineyard on the hill, a galette lunch, the Moulin Rouge and the Arc de Triomphe at dusk.
The palace, the gardens and the Trianon estate, a day trip by RER C with a booked time slot.
Everything today is within a 30-minute walk, so it's the easiest day to start on. Book your Sainte-Chapelle time slot before you leave home: in winter the chapel closes at 5pm and the morning light is the best.
Start with the building everyone watched burn. On 15 April 2019 a fire destroyed the spire and the oak roof frame of Notre-Dame, which was begun in 1163 and largely finished by about 1260. It reopened on 7 and 8 December 2024 after five years of work. The cockerel from the top of the old spire, found in the rubble, is now on show inside, and the Crown of Thorns relic came back on 13 December 2024. Victor Hugo's 1831 novel revived interest in the neglected medieval building and led to the restoration of 1844-1864 under Viollet-le-Duc.
Entry to the nave is free. You can simply queue, but there's an official free booking system with a time slot: you show the ID of the person who booked and a QR code. The towers are a separate paid visit, 16 EUR and 424 steps with no lift, sold only through the national monuments site, so book ahead.
Five minutes from the cathedral, inside the grounds of the Palais de Justice, Louis IX built a chapel between 1238 and 1248 to hold his relics of the Passion, above all the Crown of Thorns. It's a jewelry box of a building: the upper chapel is almost entirely glass, with one of the largest collections of original 13th-century stained glass anywhere. During the Revolution the relics were removed, and they ended up at Notre-Dame.
Climb the narrow stair to the upper chapel and give it ten minutes of standing still. Book a time slot in advance, and arrive on time, since you can't enter before the hour on your ticket and security checks are strict. From October to March the chapel is open 9am to 5pm (last access 30 minutes before), from April to September until 7pm. A combined ticket with the Conciergerie next door, the old prison where Marie Antoinette was held, is 30 EUR (23 EUR for EEA residents). Take it only if you like prison history; the chapel is the main event.
Walk south across the Seine to the Left Bank, past the Odéon, for lunch at a place that claims to be the oldest café-restaurant in Paris, open since 1686. Le Procope serves classic French cooking, with coq au vin and braised beef cheek among its signature dishes, and it's open from noon to midnight every day.
You're paying for history and a room, not the best meal in the city, so a set menu is the sensible choice. If you only want the atmosphere, the café room is open on weekdays from 3:30pm to 5:30pm without a reservation.
Walk 12 minutes uphill into the Latin Quarter, which takes its name from the Latin that students and teachers spoke around the medieval university. The Panthéon was designed by Soufflot and built between 1758 and 1790 as a church for Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris. By the time it was finished the Revolution had started, and in 1791 it became a mausoleum for great French citizens. Victor Hugo's burial there in 1885 was the first in over fifty years.
Go down to the crypt and then look up at the nave, which is huge and cold on purpose. The panoramic view from the dome is closed for works in 2026, so the ticket covers the nave and crypt only. Open 10am to 6pm from October to March, last entry 45 minutes before closing.
Marie de' Medici, the widow of Henri IV, began the Luxembourg Palace as her new residence in 1612 and the garden around it, and the Senate meets in the palace today. The 23 hectares hold lawns, tennis courts and an octagonal basin where children sail model boats. The Medici Fountain, built in 1620, is the most beautiful corner and the best place to sit.
Parisians call it le Luco. Take a chair, face the sun and do nothing for twenty minutes: after a morning of tickets and queues, that's the most useful thing in this guide.
Finish back at the river. Shakespeare and Company at 37 rue de la Bûcherie is an English-language bookshop that George Whitman opened in 1951 as Le Mistral, and renamed in 1964 for Sylvia Beach's earlier shop of the same name. Writers still sleep among the shelves in return for helping in the shop, more than 30,000 so far. It stays open into the evening, but check the hours.
Then walk the quays. The bouquinistes, the second-hand booksellers on the river parapets, line the banks of the Seine, on the Left Bank from the Quai de la Tournelle to the Quai Voltaire. Cross to the Pont Neuf, the oldest standing bridge in Paris, and go down to the Square du Vert-Galant at the tip of the island for the river at dusk.
This is the longest day, and it only works with cuts. Metro line 1 runs straight from the Louvre to the Marais. If you're tired by the afternoon, drop Carnavalet first, then Berthillon, then the Palais-Royal and Galerie Vivienne; keep the Louvre, Place des Vosges and the Tuileries. The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays and open until 9pm on Wednesdays and Fridays.
The Louvre was a fortress before it was a palace. King Philip II began it in the late 12th century to guard the western approach to the city, and later kings turned it into a residence and filled it with art. It opened as a museum on 10 August 1793, the first anniversary of the fall of the monarchy. The glass pyramid that everyone queues under is I. M. Pei's work from Mitterrand's Grand Louvre project, and its underground lobby opened in 1989. You cannot see it all: about 35,000 works are on show. Pick three or four, and let the rest go. The Mona Lisa draws the biggest crowd in the museum, so follow the signs early and look at it for a minute rather than fighting for a photo. The Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Code of Hammurabi are all worth the walk. A time slot is recommended for everyone, and compulsory for all visitors from 17 October to 1 November 2026. The Pyramid is the main entrance. Ticket holders can also use the Carrousel and Porte des Lions entrances when they're open.
Take line 1 to Saint-Paul and walk into the Marais, the old marsh that became a district of aristocratic mansions, fell into disrepair after the Revolution and is fashionable again. Rue des Rosiers is the heart of the Jewish quarter, the Pletzl, and one of the few streets where shops stay open on Sundays, because Saturday is the Sabbath.
Lunch is a falafel sandwich, eaten standing on the pavement. L'As du Fallafel is the one with the queue, and its listed hours close it on Saturdays and from Friday afternoon, so check the day.
Five minutes away is the oldest planned square in Paris, once called the Place Royale. It's a perfectly symmetrical square of red brick and pale stone arcades around a lawn, and the Maison de Victor Hugo is on it: he lived here from 1832 to 1848, and it's now a museum. Two blocks west, the Musée Carnavalet tells the history of the city in two linked mansions, with furnished rooms from different periods and a large collection of paintings of Paris life. The permanent collections are free and need no booking. It's open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm, the ticket office closing at 5:15pm, and shut on Mondays. If you're short of time, spend the hour in the square and one or two Carnavalet rooms on the Revolution.
Walk across the Pont Marie to the Île Saint-Louis, the quiet twin of the Île de la Cité, 11 hectares with four bridges to the banks. The reason to come is Berthillon, the ice cream and sorbet maker that grew out of a café-hotel the family ran from 1954 and got its reputation in 1961, when the Gault Millau guide praised it. It still keeps its sorbet recipe secret.
Order two scoops in a cup and walk the island's main street with them. Berthillon closes for a few weeks in summer, and its Île Saint-Louis shop is listed as open Wednesday to Sunday, so don't plan this on a Monday or Tuesday.
Take the metro back west for the end of the day. Catherine de' Medici created the Tuileries in 1564 as the garden of a palace that no longer exists, and it became a public park after the Revolution. It runs straight from the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde, and the end of the afternoon, with low sun on the gravel, is the right time to be here. The garden is open until 9pm in October and 7:30pm from November.
At the west end, the Musée de l'Orangerie holds Monet's eight huge Water Lilies murals in its rooms. It's open 9am to 6pm and closed on Tuesdays, so Wednesday works if you have the energy. The Place de la Concorde beyond is the largest square in Paris, the site of the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and today has an Egyptian obelisk from Luxor, more than 3,000 years old, a gift from Egypt in the 1830s.
Cross rue de Rivoli to the Palais-Royal, built for Cardinal Richelieu from about 1633 and now home to the Ministry of Culture and the Conseil d'État. The garden behind it is public and lined with arcades. In the courtyard, Daniel Buren's black-and-white striped columns, installed in 1985-1986, caused a political row at the time and are now one of the best photo spots in the center.
A few minutes north, Galerie Vivienne is a covered passage under a glass roof, one of the best-looking of the old Paris arcades, listed as open Monday to Saturday until about 8:30pm.
For dinner, go to the Chartier on rue du Faubourg Montmartre, a bouillon, an old-style Paris canteen. The Chartier brothers opened it in 1896, and it serves every day from 11:30am to midnight, and takes no reservations: you queue and are seated wherever there's room.
The food is classic French and the point is the room and the speed. Go early or expect a line.
Orsay is closed on Mondays and open late on Thursdays, until 9:45pm. The Eiffel Tower is the one big sight with no pass, so book it as soon as you know your date. This plan does the museum in the morning and the tower after dark, when the light is best.
The museum is a railway station. The Gare d'Orsay was built in 1898-1900 for the Exposition Universelle, and the museum opened in its old train hall in December 1986. It holds French art from 1848 to 1914, which means the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting in the world: Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh.
Go straight to the Impressionist galleries while your legs are fresh. It's a better first museum than the Louvre, because it's smaller and easier to read, and you can see the best of it in two and a half hours. Reserve a time slot online: it gets you in within 30 minutes of your slot.
Walk west along the river, then into Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a district named for a Benedictine abbey that Childebert I, son of Clovis, founded in 558. The abbey church is the oldest existing church in Paris. The Vikings destroyed the abbey, it was rebuilt, and in the 12th century the church was given some of the earliest flying buttresses in the Île-de-France.
Step inside for ten minutes. It's quiet and dark compared with Notre-Dame, and nobody is queueing. The streets around it are the Paris of bookshops and galleries, best seen without a plan.
The two famous cafés face each other across the square, and both are open from 7:30am to well after midnight. Les Deux Magots, at 6 place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, was the rendezvous of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Hemingway, Camus and Picasso. The Café de Flore on the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and rue Saint-Benoît is one of the oldest coffeehouses in Paris and has the same intellectual story.
Give it a coffee, not a meal. You're paying for the name, and Parisians mostly go elsewhere, but half an hour on the terrace watching the street is a fair price for the atmosphere. Which of the two you choose matters little.
Walk 20 minutes west to the Hôtel des Invalides, a vast complex built for Louis XIV as a hospital and home for wounded soldiers, and still the home of the Musée de l'Armée. The Dôme des Invalides, 107 meters tall, is the tallest church in Paris, and it's a shrine to some of France's military leaders, most notably Napoleon, whose tomb is here.
The courtyard is free and worth the detour for the architecture alone. Napoleon's tomb and the army museum are on a paid ticket that the Paris Museum Pass covers. The Musée Rodin, a few minutes away, is the better extra museum (see If you have more time).
Walk along the Champ de Mars, the long lawn in front of the tower, and cross the Pont d'Iéna to the Trocadéro gardens. This is the classic view of the Eiffel Tower, the whole of it, which you can't get from underneath. Arrive 30 minutes before sunset, which is around 5:45pm in late October and just before 5pm in late December.
It's crowded, and it's where bracelet-tying scammers work: say no and keep walking. Then cross the bridge to the tower itself.
The tower was designed by two engineers in Gustave Eiffel's company, Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, and built from 1887 to 1889 as the centerpiece of the World's Fair marking the centennial of the Revolution. A "Committee of Three Hundred" of writers, painters and architects, including Charles Garnier and Guy de Maupassant, signed a public protest against it in 1887. Eiffel got the right to run it for 20 years, and it was scheduled to be dismantled in 1909. It survived because it turned out to be a useful radio mast, not because anyone had planned to keep it.
Book on the official site only, as early as you can; evening slots go first. For most people the second floor is the best value, and the stairs to it (674 steps, 14.80 EUR) cost less than the lift (23.50 EUR). The tower is open every day, about 9:30am to 11pm outside summer, and isn't covered by the Paris Museum Pass. Expect a security check and pickpockets in the queues, and stay until it's dark.
Montmartre has no closing day and no big museum to book, which makes it the day to do after a hard museum stretch. Go early: the hill fills up by 10am, and the climb is easier before it's hot. Wear shoes you can climb steps in, because there are many.
The basilica was proposed after France's defeat in 1870 and built from 1875 to 1914 on public subscription, to a neo-Byzantine design by Paul Abadie, and consecrated in 1919. It sits on the hill where the Paris Commune began in 1871, which is why some on the French left have always seen it as a monument to the crushing of the uprising. White and domed against the sky, it's one of the most recognizable buildings in the city.
Entry to the basilica is free and it opens every day from 6:30am to 10:30pm. The steps in front are the best free view in Paris. You can climb the 222 steps of rue Foyatier beside the funicular, or take the funicular with a normal transit ticket. Ignore the men tying bracelets on the steps; say no and walk on.
Two minutes from the basilica is the square that used to be the village green of Montmartre. The hill was a separate village outside Paris, with windmills and vineyards, until it was annexed on 1 January 1860, and in 1790 its town hall stood on this square. In the late 19th century it filled with painters. Renoir had a studio on rue Cortot, and Picasso lived at the Bateau-Lavoir nearby.
Today the square is full of artists painting portraits of tourists. The honest verdict: it's loud, the portraits are tourist art, and the restaurants around it are the most expensive on the hill. Agree a price before anyone starts drawing, take a photo and move on.
The Musée de Montmartre is the best way to understand what the hill was. It's in the house where Suzanne Valadon and her son Maurice Utrillo lived and worked in second-floor studios, and which was Renoir's first address on the hill. It's open daily, closing at 6pm or 7pm depending on the exhibition.
Nearby, on rue Saint-Vincent, a small vineyard keeps up the wine-making that Montmartre did for centuries and yields about 500 liters a year. A short walk away is Au Lapin Agile, the cabaret that Picasso painted in 1905 and where artists gathered a century ago. It's a night-time venue, listed as open in the evening from Tuesday to Saturday.
Walk down to the Abbesses, the lively village center of the hill, for lunch. A galette is a savory buckwheat crêpe, and the classic is the complète with ham, egg and cheese, eaten with a bowl of cider. Crêperies are a good-value lunch here, far better than the restaurants on Place du Tertre.
Look for a place with a short menu and French on the board, and don't sit on a terrace with a photo menu.
Walk down the hill to the red windmill on Boulevard de Clichy. The Moulin Rouge opened on 6 October 1889, the same year as the Eiffel Tower, as a garden café-concert founded by Joseph Oller and Charles Zidler, and it became the birthplace of the modern can-can. Toulouse-Lautrec's posters made it famous. A fire destroyed it on 27 February 1915, and it reopened in 1925.
The show is a dinner-and-revue evening that costs a great deal and needs booking well ahead. If you don't want one, the building is a five-minute photo stop, and the streets around Pigalle are rougher than the rest of the hill, so keep going.
Metro line 2 runs from the foot of Montmartre to Charles de Gaulle-Étoile. Napoleon commissioned the arch in 1806 after the victory at Austerlitz, work stopped under the Bourbons, and it was finished in 1836. Beneath it lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from the First World War, with an eternal flame lit in memory of the unidentified dead. You reach the arch by the underpass, not by crossing the roundabout.
The terrace is open from 10am to 10:30pm Wednesday to Monday from October to March (Tuesdays from 11am), with the last entry 45 minutes before closing. The lift has been out of service since late July 2026, so the climb is 284 steps; the date for its return, in 2027, has not been announced. Go up at sunset for the view down the Champs-Élysées and across the city.
Walk down the Champs-Élysées, 1.9 kilometers and 70 meters wide, from the Arc to the Place de la Concorde. It's the finish of the Tour de France and the route of the Bastille Day parade, and the honest verdict is that the shops are mostly chains and the cafés expensive.
It's worth walking once, at night, downhill, with the Arc behind you and the obelisk ahead. Don't eat here; take the metro to the Marais, Saint-Germain or the Opéra district for dinner.
The palace and the Trianon are closed on Mondays; a Saturday works. Versailles and Giverny are the two classic day trips, and you only have time for one. For a first visit Versailles is the better choice. Pick Giverny, which is open only from April to early November, if you prefer gardens to palaces (see If you have more time).
Take the RER C to Versailles Château Rive Gauche; the Metro-Train-RER ticket now works for the whole trip, so it costs the same as a ride in the center. Louis XIII built a modest hunting lodge here in 1623. His son Louis XIV turned it into the most imposing palace in Europe, and on 6 May 1682 the court moved in permanently. The royal family stayed until 6 October 1789, when a crowd that had marched from Paris on 5 October forced them back to the capital. In June 1919 the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors.
Book the Passport with a time slot for the palace: slots run from 9am to 3pm, each valid for 30 minutes, and the palace itself is open 9am to 6:30pm from April to October, earlier in winter. The Passport covers the palace, the Trianon estate, the gardens and the audio guide. The palace and Trianon are closed every Monday. The Hall of Mirrors is the room you came for; the King's and Queen's apartments make sense of the rest. Paris Museum Pass holders must still book a free Passport slot.
Don't eat on the palace square, where the menus are written for coach groups. Walk 15 minutes into the town to the Marché Notre-Dame, the market square, whose covered halls are open Tuesday to Sunday, with a midday break on weekdays and a 2pm close on Sundays. The streets around it are full of bakeries, cheese shops and ordinary brasseries.
A bakery sandwich or a plat du jour at a brasserie is the right order.
The gardens were laid out by André Le Nôtre and cover 93 hectares of formal garden inside a park of 815. Walk down the central axis from the palace to the Grand Canal, which is much farther than it looks. The Musical Fountains Show and the Musical Gardens run from 1 April to 1 November in 2026, and on those days entry to the gardens is paid unless you hold a Passport.
Gardens and park are open 7am to 8:30pm. Outside the show season the grounds are free, bare and very quiet, which some people prefer. Check the official calendar for show days.
At the far end of the park, the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon were built as escapes from court life. They open at noon, close at 6:30pm and are shut on Mondays. The Petit Trianon is associated with Marie Antoinette, and the Queen's Hamlet beyond it is the part everyone remembers.
It's quieter and smaller than the palace, a good counterpoint to the Hall of Mirrors. The walk from the palace is long, so keep the Trianon for the end of the day and check on the palace site how to get around the park.
Six more places that didn't fit in five days, from the nearest to the farthest.
A museum of the Middle Ages built into Roman baths and a 15th-century mansion. Its best-known work is the set of six tapestries called The Lady and the Unicorn. It's open Tuesday to Sunday, about 9:30am to 6:15pm, so it fits easily into day one.
Getting there: 1 km from Notre-Dame, metro line 10 to Cluny-La Sorbonne
Rodin's sculpture in a mansion and garden minutes from Les Invalides. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6:30pm (last entry 5:45pm), 14 EUR, closed Mondays. The best choice when you're tired of paintings.
Getting there: 3 km west of Notre-Dame, metro line 13 to Varenne
Official website
The first garden cemetery in Paris, opened in 1804, with more than a million burials. Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Édith Piaf, Marcel Proust and Chopin are all buried here. Open from 8am on weekdays, 8:30am on Saturday and 9am on Sunday, closing at 5:30pm from 6 November to 15 March (a little later in summer), so allow two hours and wear flat shoes.
Getting there: 7 km east, metro line 2 to Philippe Auguste, or lines 2 and 3 to Père Lachaise
A royal château with a large park. Open every day except Tuesday, 9:30am to 5pm from October to March (last entry 4:15pm), and the park and gardens are free. A calmer alternative to Versailles.
Getting there: About 60 km southeast, by train from Gare de Lyon to Fontainebleau-Avon, then a local bus (check the journey time)
Official website
Claude Monet's house and the water-lily garden he painted for 43 years. Open every day from 1 April to 1 November in 2026, 10am to 6pm, 13 EUR. It closes for the winter, so in the cold months see the Water Lilies at the Orangerie instead. It's in Normandy, which has its own guide: 5 Days in Normandy.
Getting there: About 80 km northwest, train from Gare Saint-Lazare to Vernon-Giverny, then a shuttle at about 5 EUR one way
Official website
Most of the cathedral was built between 1194 and 1220, and it keeps its medieval stained glass and a labyrinth in the nave floor. UNESCO listed it in 1979. A day trip for people who prefer Gothic to palaces.
Getting there: About 90 km southwest, around an hour by train from Gare Montparnasse
Paris eating is simpler than its reputation. Good bakeries, short menus and a glass of wine at the counter beat the grand restaurants.
Buttery, flaky and shaped like a crescent, made from a laminated yeast dough. A good one is crisp outside and light inside, never greasy. Eat it warm, at breakfast, with a coffee.
Where to try it: A neighborhood boulangerie in the morning. Du Pain et des Idées on rue Yves Toudic (10th) is a long-running bakery known for its viennoiseries and organic bread, closed at weekends.
A baguette split open, spread with butter and filled with ham. More than three million are sold in France every day, more than any sandwich except the hamburger.
Where to try it: A boulangerie or traiteur. Skip the chain sandwich shops around the Louvre.
Chicken braised in red wine with mushrooms, bacon and small onions. It's a country dish that has become a Paris bistro classic. Better in cold weather.
Where to try it: Traditional bistros and old brasseries. Le Procope on rue de l'Ancienne Comédie lists it among its signature dishes.
Onions cooked down in stock and served under a lid of melted cheese on bread. The version we know dates from the mid-19th century.
Where to try it: Old-style brasseries open late. Order it as a starter and share.
Thin pancakes from Brittany, sweet (sugar, butter, chestnut cream) or savory as galettes made with buckwheat. Many crêperies sit around Montparnasse, the station for trains to Brittany, and in Montmartre. Drink Breton cider with them.
Where to try it: A crêperie in Montmartre (see day four) or around Montparnasse.
A rich custard under a thin sheet of caramelized sugar that cracks under the spoon. It's a bistro dessert, and the test is whether the custard is cold and creamy and the top still crisp.
Where to try it: Bistros and brasseries, as the closing dish of a set menu.
The long, thin loaf with a crisp crust. In 2022 the know-how and culture of baguette-making were added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Ask for a tradition for a better crust, and eat it the same day.
Where to try it: Any boulangerie with a queue at 12:30pm.
A soft, creamy cheese from Normandy with a white rind, and the cheese most people know. In France the cheese comes before dessert, not with it. Ask a fromager to choose one that is ripe on the day you'll eat it.
Where to try it: A fromagerie or a market stall, with a baguette.
A finger of choux pastry filled with cream and covered in glossy icing, in flavors from chocolate and coffee to pistachio. The Paris-Brest, a ring of choux with praline cream, was created for the Paris-Brest-Paris bicycle race and looks like a wheel.
Where to try it: A pâtisserie. Pick the one with a short list and fresh fillings.
Wine by the glass (un verre de vin) from a bistro or wine bar is the easiest way to drink well; ask for the house red or white. A draft beer is un demi, usually a small glass of lager.
Where to try it: A bar à vins or the counter of a bistro. Avoid places that put a photo menu on the pavement.
Cognac is a brandy from the Charente, twice distilled and aged in oak, drunk after dinner. Pastis is an anise-flavored aperitif at 40-45% alcohol, poured over water and ice, which turns it cloudy.
Where to try it: Any bar or bistro. Pastis comes with a small jug of water.
In France a café is a small black espresso. Ask for a café crème if you want milk, a noisette for a dash of it, and a café allongé for a longer, weaker one. Drinking it at the bar (au comptoir) costs less than at a table.
Where to try it: A corner café with a zinc counter. The famous Saint-Germain terraces charge for the name.
Paris is divided into 20 numbered arrondissements spiraling outward from the Louvre. Stay in the 1st to 7th or the 9th to 11th and you're never far from a metro line.
Best for: First-timers who want to walk to a lot and eat well at night
Central, with historic mansions, bars and restaurants, and shops open on Sundays when much of Paris is shut. The catch: rooms are small and pricey, and weekends are noisy.
Best for: Literary Paris, quiet mornings and the gardens
Classic Left Bank streets with bookshops, the Luxembourg Gardens and good metro links. The catch: the streets close to Notre-Dame and Saint-Michel are tourist-heavy, and cheaper rooms are small and old.
Best for: Transit connections, shopping and a more local feel
Several metro lines, the Palais Garnier and the covered passages are nearby. The catch: it's less atmospheric than the Marais or the Left Bank, and the streets are busy at night.
Best for: A village feel and a hilltop breakfast
Atmospheric and a bit removed from the center, with the best views. The catch: lots of steps, tourist crowds by day and rougher streets near Pigalle and the Gare du Nord.
Best for: Eiffel views and a quiet, elegant neighborhood
Calm, polished streets near the tower, Les Invalides and the Rodin museum. The catch: dinner options are limited and pricey, and you're a metro ride from the Marais and Montmartre.
In Map Drop the countries of Europe fall one at a time and you drop each into its place - France is one of the pieces.
The practical stuff that makes the first day in Paris easier.
The Louvre is closed Tuesdays, Orsay and Versailles Mondays, and the Orangerie Tuesdays. Book a time slot for the Louvre, Orsay, Sainte-Chapelle, the Versailles palace and the Notre-Dame towers, and book the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe online too. Notre-Dame itself is free, with an optional free slot. The Louvre warns about copycat ticket sites, so buy from the official sites only.
The pass is sold for 2, 4 or 6 days, counted in hours from your first visit, at roughly 85, 105 and 125 EUR (reseller figures, so confirm on the pass site). It covers the Louvre, Orsay, Sainte-Chapelle, the Panthéon, the Arc de Triomphe, the Notre-Dame towers, Orangerie, Rodin, Cluny and Versailles, but not the Eiffel Tower, and you still book slots. On this plan a non-EEA adult spends roughly 140-150 EUR on single tickets, so the 6-day pass saves a little; an EEA adult breaks even at best, and under-26 EU residents get most sites free. Count your own list before buying.
Since the 2025 reform the old paper t+ ticket is gone. Buy a Navigo Easy card (2 EUR) and load Metro-Train-RER tickets on it at 2.55 EUR each (2026), or Bus-Tram tickets at 2.05 EUR. These work in all zones, so Versailles costs the same as a ride in the center, but not at the airports. A Navigo Jour is 12.30 EUR a day, and a Navigo Semaine is 32.40 EUR from Monday to Sunday (it can't go on a Navigo Easy: use a Navigo Découverte card or a phone), which pays off at 13 rides or more. Paris Visite rarely beats either. The airport ticket is 14 EUR.
Cards and contactless work almost everywhere, but carry a few euros for small bakeries and toilets. Service is already included in menu prices, so a tip is a small bonus, not an obligation, and rounding up is enough. Ask for une carafe d'eau for free tap water instead of bottled.
Pickpockets work the metro, the Louvre queue, Sacré-Cœur and the Eiffel Tower. Keep your phone and wallet in a front pocket or a zipped bag. Say no to the bracelet-tying men on the Sacré-Cœur steps and to anyone with a petition clipboard.
Say bonjour when you enter a shop, café or bakery, and merci, au revoir when you leave. It changes how you're served. Most people in the center speak English, but starting in French, even badly, helps.
France is in the EU roaming zone, so EU plans work as at home; others should check with their provider or buy a local eSIM. Plugs are the European two-round-pin type (C and E), 230 V.
Yes for a first visit. Five days gives you one area a day plus Versailles, with time to sit in a café, which is half the point. Three days would mean cutting Montmartre or the Left Bank, and seven would let you add Fontainebleau, Giverny and the cemeteries.
Notre-Dame and Sainte-Chapelle, the Louvre, Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, Sacré-Cœur and Montmartre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Marais and Place des Vosges, and the Panthéon and the Luxembourg Gardens. This plan covers all of them, plus Versailles.
Versailles for most first visits: it's 16 km away, open all year except Mondays, and easy by RER C. Giverny is the alternative for gardens and Monet, but it's open only from April to 1 November in 2026 and needs a train plus a shuttle. Fontainebleau and Chartres are the quieter options.
Only if you visit four or five of the paid sights it covers, such as the Louvre, Orsay, Sainte-Chapelle, the Arc de Triomphe and Versailles. It doesn't cover the Eiffel Tower, and you still book slots. Add up the single prices for your own list first.
Yes, in the sense that violent crime against visitors is uncommon in the center. Pickpocketing is the real problem, in the metro, at the main sights and in the queues. Stay alert in the metro at night and around the big stations.
It can be, but a lot is free or cheap: Notre-Dame, Sacré-Cœur, the gardens, the permanent collections at Carnavalet and the bakeries. The costs are tickets (the Louvre is 32 EUR for non-EEA visitors), taxis and sit-down meals in tourist areas. Eat lunch in a bakery or a bistro and you'll save a lot.
Citizens of the EU, the US, the UK, Canada and Australia can stay up to 90 days in any 180 in the Schengen area without a visa. The EU's new entry system (EES) has been running at the borders since April 2026, and the ETIAS travel authorization has no confirmed start date yet, so check the official EU pages before you travel.
In hotels, museums and the center, mostly yes. Open with bonjour and a few words of French and people switch to English more happily. In small bakeries and local cafés, expect to use some French.
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