1Religion and art
Notre-Dame Cathedral
The cathedral reopened in December 2024 after the 2019 fire, and since September 2025 you can climb the towers again, 69 meters up.
View details for Notre-Dame Cathedral- Best time to go
- April to JuneSeptember to October
- Suggested stay
- 3 to 5 days
- Airport
- Roissy-Charles de Gaulle (CDG)Orly (ORY)
- Currency
- Euro (€)
- Language
- French
- Time zone
- UTC+1UTC+2 in summer
Overview
Paris reads like a set of numbers. The city is divided into 20 arrondissements, and the district number shows up in every address, on every street sign and in every conversation about where to have dinner. It is also more compact than its fame suggests: about 105 km² (roughly 40 square miles) and a little over 2 million residents, with stretches of the Seine banks recognized by UNESCO since 1991. In practice, much of what you want to see is a walk from the river, and the bridges work as shortcut, viewpoint and resting bench all at once.
The news that redrew the city's recent map has an address on the Île de la Cité: Notre-Dame, reopened in December 2024, more than five years after the fire of April 15, 2019. The towers welcomed visitors again in September 2025. Around the cathedral, though, the construction site goes on: the city is redoing the surroundings with over a hundred new trees and a 5-millimeter sheet of water that will flow across the forecourt on days of extreme heat. Most of it should be ready in 2028, so expect scaffolding in your photos.
The weather favors walkers, with caveats: rain tends to be light and spread across the whole year, and summer can bring heat waves. Build each day around one neighborhood and one bank of the river, book ahead anything with a set time, and leave one afternoon with no plan at all. That is when you find the bakery you will be talking about once you get home.
Did you know?
The Eiffel Tower gets about 60 tons of paint every seven years. The official color has changed a few times and today is a brown leaning toward yellow.
The two biggest bells in France live on high points of the city: the Savoyarde at Sacré-Cœur, weighing about 19 tons, and the bourdon Emmanuel at Notre-Dame, installed in 1686 and weighing 13.3 tons.
For 41 years, the Eiffel Tower was the tallest structure ever built by humans. It lost the title in 1930 to the Chrysler Building in New York.
At Sacré-Cœur, Eucharistic adoration has gone on day and night, without interruption, since August 1, 1885. Someone is always praying inside, even in the small hours.
Things to see in Paris
1
2Religion and art
Sainte-Chapelle
A Gothic chapel built by Louis IX to house relics of the Passion, with walls that are almost all glass: 1,113 stained-glass panels, by the monument's own count.
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3Neighborhoods
The Marais and Place des Vosges
A neighborhood of narrow streets around the oldest planned square in Paris, with the house where Victor Hugo lived and the falafel lines of Rue des Rosiers.
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4Museums
Louvre Museum
A former royal palace with the remains of a medieval fortress underground, the world's most visited art museum welcomed about 9 million people in 2025.
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5Museums
Musée d'Orsay
A train station built for the 1900 World's Fair that, in 1986, became the world's largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.
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6Viewpoints
Eiffel Tower
Built for the 1889 World's Fair and scheduled to be dismantled in 1909, the tower was saved by radio and today stands 330 meters tall, antennas included.
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7Neighborhoods
Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur
A hill of about 130 meters that only became part of Paris in 1860, with the white basilica on top, painters on the Place du Tertre and a vineyard that still makes wine.
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8Parks and gardens
Père Lachaise Cemetery
The largest cemetery in Paris, with 44 hectares of tree-lined paths and the graves of Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Édith Piaf and Jim Morrison.
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9Viewpoints
Arc de Triomphe
Commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 and inaugurated in 1836, the arch holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and has a rooftop terrace, 284 steps up.
View details for Arc de Triomphe1Religion and art
Notre-Dame Cathedral
More than five years closed changes a city's relationship with its cathedral. Notre-Dame welcomed visitors again in December 2024, and the restoration became part of the visit: even the tower route has models and sounds that tell the story of the work. Outside, the surroundings are still a work site: the city is redoing the forecourt and the gardens, and the schedule runs to 2028.
The climb up the towers, reopened on September 20, 2025, is worth the effort. It is 424 steps to the top of the south tower, past a double oak staircase built during the restoration and gargoyles and chimeras seen at arm's length. Along the way sits the bourdon Emmanuel, a bell from 1686 that rings only on special occasions. Up top, Sacré-Cœur appears on the other side of the city.
2Religion and art
Sainte-Chapelle
From the outside it nearly disappears: the Sainte-Chapelle sits inside the Palais de Justice complex, a few minutes from Notre-Dame, and the way there gives nothing away. You pass through the lower chapel, climb to the upper chapel and, up there, the walls simply cease to exist. There are about 670 m² of glass, not counting the great rose window on the facade.
Louis IX had the chapel built to hold relics of the Passion of Christ, among them the Crown of Thorns, and it was consecrated in 1248. Fifteen tall windows tell biblical stories in color, and the effect is of standing inside a reliquary. Don't be surprised if the whole group goes quiet on reaching the last step.
3Neighborhoods
The Marais and Place des Vosges
The Place des Vosges began as the Place Royale, built by Henry IV between 1605 and 1612: a perfect square of 140 by 140 meters. It got its current name in honor of the Vosges département, the first to pay the taxes for a revolutionary army campaign. Tax punctuality earned one of the city's most beautiful squares.
Victor Hugo lived at number 6 from 1832 to 1848, and the apartment is now a museum. From there, walk to Rue des Rosiers, the heart of the Jewish quarter known as the Pletzl. The shops on the street open on Sundays, an exception to Paris's trading rules, and so the sidewalk fills up just when the rest of the city rests.
4Museums
Louvre Museum
The least obvious way to start the Louvre is from underneath. In the basement you can still see the remains of the fortress King Philip II had built in the late 12th century, long before the building became a palace and, in 1793, a museum. Starting there gives the rest some scale: you are walking through more than eight centuries of construction and remodeling.
Upstairs, about 35,000 works are on display, and the Mona Lisa is just one of them, almost always surrounded by a small forest of raised phones. I. M. Pei's glass pyramid, opened in 1989, became the front door. Since January 2026, visitors from outside the European Economic Area pay a higher fare.
5Museums
Musée d'Orsay
Before Monet, trains passed through here. The Orsay building was a railway station built between 1898 and 1900 to receive the crowds of the World's Fair, and the central nave still looks like a gare. The great clock designed by Victor Laloux, one of the architects, still presides over the hall as if someone were about to miss a train.
The collection runs from 1848 to 1914, the exact slice of history in which Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Van Gogh and Berthe Morisot turned painting upside down. The museum opened in December 1986 and is far easier to digest than the Louvre, which makes it the best choice for anyone with just one afternoon for museums.
6Viewpoints
Eiffel Tower
In 1887, a group of artists and intellectuals signed a petition calling the project useless and monstrous. The tower was finished in 1889, with a contract to last 20 years, and escaped demolition for a decidedly unromantic reason: it became a support for radiotelegraphy. The symbol of Paris survived as an antenna.
And it moves. In the heat, the top can shift up to 18 cm away from the sun, and the wind makes the structure sway a few centimeters. You can go up by elevator or by stairs, open to the public up to the second level, about 600 steps above the ground. Take the stairs and you arrive out of breath and with a moral right to a sandwich.
7Neighborhoods
Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur
Montmartre stayed outside Paris's limits until January 1, 1860, and it still climbs its slope with a village air. Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon at the Bateau-Lavoir, Renoir and Van Gogh also passed through, and on the Place du Tertre the painters still portray tourists. On Rue Saint-Vincent, a small vineyard produces about 500 liters of wine a year.
At the top, the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur, begun in 1875 and consecrated in 1919, has a trick: Château-Landon stone releases calcite in the rain, which helps keep the facade white. Entry to the basilica is free, and those with breath to spare can climb to the dome.
8Parks and gardens
Père Lachaise Cemetery
When it opened in 1804, Père-Lachaise was far out and almost nobody wanted to be buried there. The fix, in 1817, was a marketing move: transferring the remains of Molière and La Fontaine. It worked so well that today more than a million people are buried there, and there is still a waiting list for a plot.
It was the first garden cemetery in Paris, designed by Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, and the visit feels more like a walk in the park than a funereal outing. Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Édith Piaf and Jim Morrison are among the most sought-after graves. At the Communards' Wall, 147 communards were shot in 1871, during the Bloody Week.
9Viewpoints
Arc de Triomphe
Twelve avenues empty into the square around the Arc de Triomphe, and the traffic circles it with no apparent rules. Don't even think about crossing on foot at street level: pedestrian access is through underground passages, from the Champs-Élysées and from Avenue de la Grande Armée. Napoleon commissioned the arch in 1806, work stopped during the Restoration and the inauguration only came in 1836.
Beneath the vault lies the Unknown Soldier, a French combatant of the First World War buried there in 1921. Every evening at 6:30 p.m., veterans' associations rekindle the flame in a free ceremony open to the public. Afterward, take on the 284 steps to the terrace and watch the avenues radiate out like a star.
3-day itinerary
Day 1
The island and the Marais
- 1Notre-Dame, with a reserved tower climb
- 2Sainte-Chapelle in late morning
- 3Place des Vosges and Victor Hugo's house
- Falafel on Rue des Rosiers
Day 2
Museums on both sides of the river
- 4The Louvre right at opening
- Walk across the Seine to the Left Bank
- 5Musée d'Orsay in the afternoon
- 6Eiffel Tower in the late afternoon
Day 3
Hill, memory and the flame
- 7Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur in the morning
- Lunch in the 18th arrondissement
- 8Père-Lachaise in the afternoon
- 9Arc de Triomphe for the flame ceremony and the terrace
Map
9 places on the map
Practical tips
Metro tickets and the airports
Since 2025, the single ticket for the metro, trains and RER has one price across the whole region, but it is not valid to the airports. To get to or from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly, there is a separate, more expensive ticket. Check the current fares before you buy.
The free entry that isn't for everyone
Free entry for people under 26 at many monuments applies to residents of the European Union. Visitors from outside the European Economic Area pay the higher non-EEA rate, which at the Louvre and the Sainte-Chapelle is steeper. Check the rules for your own nationality before you go.
Always carry a small umbrella
The climate is oceanic: rain tends to be light and spread across the whole year, and in July the average sits between 15 and 25 °C (59 to 77 °F). In summer, heat waves happen, so carry a water bottle.
Say hello first
When you walk into a bakery, shop or café, greet people with a bonjour before placing your order. Skipping this step tends to make the service noticeably chillier.
Bag in front
On the crowded metro and in the lines at the most famous monuments, keep your backpack in front of you and your phone away from your back pocket.
Food and drink
In Paris, the most democratic meal goes under your arm. The baguette joined UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2022, and every bakery has its own, because the recipe calls for only flour, water, salt and yeast and the result changes with the oven, the temperature and the day's humidity. Since 1994, the city has chosen the best baguette de tradition, and the winning bakery earns the right to supply the Élysée Palace for a year: in 2026, the title went to Fournil Didot, in the 14th arrondissement. In the Marais, the quick lunch changes accent and becomes falafel.
A version regulated since 1993, made with additive-free flour, a short knead and a long fermentation. Ask for it by its full name: the ordinary baguette is something else.
Fried chickpea balls, the most sought-after stand-up lunch in the Marais. L'As du Fallafel, a kosher restaurant at numbers 32 and 34 on the street, is the most popular address.