Twenty villages on a river, and the museums are the least of it.
Ninety seconds on Paris
Four days, five with Versailles. One on each bank, one for the museums and one for the hill at Montmartre is the shape most trips settle into. Versailles wants a full day of its own to justify the journey out.
The Métro, paid from a phone. One flat fare has covered the whole network since 2025, so the old zone arithmetic is gone, and a Navigo pass loads straight into the wallet app. Walking often beats changing lines twice.
April to June, then September and October. August empties the city: Parisians leave and a great many restaurants and small shops close for the month, which is either the appeal or the problem depending on the trip.
French. English works across the centre and in anything aimed at visitors. Opening with bonjour before the question is the local convention, and its absence is noticed more than a poor accent.
The euro. Cards are taken everywhere, the Métro machines included. Service is included by law, so a tip is a euro or two left on the table when the meal deserved it.
Charles de Gaulle CDG and Orly ORY. The RER B runs from CDG into the centre in about 35 minutes. Beauvais BVA is sold as Paris by the budget airlines and lies 85 kilometres out, with a coach that adds well over an hour to the journey.
Paris is small. The twenty arrondissements spiral out from the Louvre, and the whole of the centre is an hour's walk across. Most of what a first visit wants sits on the river or a few streets back from it.
The two banks are two temperaments. The Right Bank has the Louvre, the opera and the shops; the Left has the Sorbonne, the cafes and the gardens. Sleep on one and cross to the other every day.
Book the Louvre, the Orsay and the tower, and let the rest be walking. The smaller museums, the Orangerie, the Rodin, the Carnavalet, have no queue and are the ones people remember.
August is the month to avoid. The city empties, the bakeries close in rotation and the heat sits in the stone. Late spring and early autumn are the seasons the cafe terraces were built for.
The aristocratic quarter the Revolution left behind, a grid of seventeenth-century mansions now holding the Picasso and Carnavalet museums, the Place des Vosges and the Jewish quarter around the rue des Rosiers. It is the district that stays open on Sundays, and the easiest to stay in for walking everywhere.
The Left Bank of the cafes: the Flore and the Deux Magots on the boulevard, the oldest church in Paris behind them, and the Luxembourg Gardens ten minutes south. It is the polished side of the river, with the galleries and the bookshops, and the best base for a first visit.
The village on the hill, with the Sacré-Cœur on top, the painters' square behind it and the steep streets the postcards use. Come early or late; the funicular and the steps are a crowd by eleven, and the streets west of the basilica are the ones to walk.
The student quarter around the Sorbonne, where the Panthéon, the Cluny museum and the Jardin des Plantes sit among bookshops and the cheapest restaurants in the centre. The rue Mouffetard market street is the reason to come in the morning.
The avenue from the Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, and the grand quarter around it: the Grand and Petit Palais, the couture houses on the avenue Montaigne and the palace hotels. It is the Paris of the postcards and the least like a neighbourhood anyone lives in.
The canal of iron footbridges and locks in the tenth, lined with the cafes and small shops of the city's younger east. Sunday afternoons on the quays are the scene; the Buttes-Chaumont park is a twenty-minute walk north.
Take Metro Line 1 straight from La Defense to Palais Royal, book a timed slot in advance, and pick two wings rather than attempting the whole building.
A triumphal arch completed in 1836 honouring those who fought for France, located at the centre of Place Charles de Gaulle. Designed by Jean Chalgrin.
An iron lattice monument completed in 1889 for the World's Fair, standing 330 metres tall and designed by Gustave Eiffel. The most visited paid monument in the world.
Small enough for 90 minutes; arrive at opening to see the Water Lilies rooms before the tour groups fill them.
Half the size of the big museums and twice as calm; combine it with the Fondation Louis Vuitton in one afternoon.
Walkable from the Marais and best done in a focused hour and a half; check which thematic hang is up, since the collection rotates rather than sitting on permanent display.
A white Romano-Byzantine basilica completed in 1914 atop the Montmartre hill, designed by Paul Abadie. The interior is decorated with a large golden mosaic.
The closest serious art venue to La Defense and reachable in about 20 minutes; book online and leave time for the roof terraces.
A 24.7-hectare public garden created in 1612 for Marie de' Medici, featuring classical sculptures, a grand basin, tree-lined walks, and the Luxembourg Palace.
The dedicated sculpture galleries within the Louvre, including works by Michelangelo, Canova, and Houdon in the Richelieu and Denon wings.
Houses the world's largest collection of Pablo Picasso's work, spanning six decades and 5,000 pieces, displayed in the Hôtel Salé, a 17th-century mansion in the Marais.
A medieval Catholic cathedral begun in 1163, celebrated for its Gothic architecture, rose windows, and flying buttresses. Currently undergoing restoration following the 2019 fire.
A neoclassical mausoleum built 1757, 1790 in the Latin Quarter, housing the remains of Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, and Curie. Designed as a church but repurposed to honour French luminaries.
The ossuary under Montparnasse holding the bones of some six million Parisians, moved from the city's cemeteries from 1786. Timed tickets sell out days ahead; the walk-up queue runs to two hours.
Piano and Rogers's inside-out building of 1977 holding Europe's largest modern art collection. It closed for a five-year renovation in 2025; the collection travels to the Grand Palais and other venues until it reopens.
The smaller of the two islands, a seventeenth-century village of one main street behind Notre-Dame, with the Berthillon ice cream shop and the quays that circle it. Fifteen minutes to walk round.
The botanical garden of 1635 on the Left Bank, with the Natural History Museum's Grande Galerie de l'Évolution, the greenhouses and the small zoo. Free to walk through.
The 1973 office tower the city regretted, with the one viewpoint in Paris that takes in the Eiffel Tower and does not have the tower in the way. The 56th-floor terrace opens until late.
The house where Renoir painted, now the museum of the hill's painters and its cabarets, with the gardens above the Clos Montmartre vineyard. The quiet way to see Montmartre.
The opera house of 1875, the most opulent building of the Second Empire, with the grand staircase, the Chagall ceiling and the foyer that Versailles would recognise. Visits run most days when there is no matinee.
A quarry turned into a romantic park in 1867, with a lake, a cliff, a suspension bridge and a temple on the summit. The east's answer to the Luxembourg, and much less crowded.
The largest cemetery in Paris and a hillside of tombs from 1804 on: Chopin, Wilde, Piaf, Proust and Jim Morrison, whose grave has a fence. Pick up a map at the gate; the hill is bigger than it looks.
The most ornate bridge on the Seine, built for the 1900 exposition with gilded statues at each end, linking the Grand Palais to the Invalides. The view along the river to the Eiffel Tower is the one to take from here.
The English-language bookshop on the quay facing Notre-Dame, the 1951 successor to Sylvia Beach's shop, with writers still sleeping upstairs among the books. The queue outside moves quickly.
Le Nôtre's garden of 1664 between the Louvre and the Concorde, the axis the whole city is laid out on. The green chairs around the ponds are free to move.
Go at opening or reserve the Thursday late evening; the fifth-floor Impressionist galleries jam solid by midday.
The sculpture garden is the reason to come, so pick a dry day and buy the combined garden and house ticket.
Book ahead for temporary exhibitions, which sell out; the free audio guide is worth taking for the house itself.
Reopened after a major renovation and now easy to see in ninety minutes; the tapestry room alone justifies the trip.
Free permanent collection and a ten-minute walk from most Marais addresses; go early in the trip for context on everything else.
The permanent collection is free and rarely crowded; pair it with a walk along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower.
Dimly lit galleries reward a slow single loop rather than a sprint; the rooftop terrace gives an Eiffel Tower view without the tower queue.
The Khmer galleries on the ground floor are the reason to come; the attached Buddhist Pantheon annexe and its Japanese garden are free and usually empty.
Free permanent collection and a genuinely good interior courtyard garden; 90 minutes is plenty.
A 13th-century Gothic chapel built by King Louis IX to house Christian relics, famous for 1,113 stained-glass panels depicting biblical scenes. Located on Île de la Cité.
The medieval royal palace on the Île de la Cité that became the Revolution's prison, where Marie-Antoinette waited for the guillotine. The Gothic hall is one of the largest in Europe; a joint ticket covers Sainte-Chapelle next door.
The 1912 department store under a stained-glass dome, with a free rooftop terrace looking across the opera house's roof to the tower. The dome is the reason to go in.
The oldest covered market in Paris, from 1615, in the upper Marais, now a ring of food stalls for lunch: Moroccan, Japanese, Lebanese and a very good crêpe stand. Closed Mondays.
Richelieu's palace beside the Louvre, with the colonnaded garden, the striped Buren columns in the courtyard and the arcades of small shops around it. Free, and the calmest garden in the centre.
The oldest planned square in Paris, finished in 1612, a perfect quadrangle of brick and stone arcades around a garden in the Marais. Victor Hugo's house on the south-east corner is a free museum.
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