TRIP OVERVIEW
Day 1 – Sainte-Chapelle · Conciergerie · Notre-Dame · Panthéon · Rue Mouffetard
Day 2 – Invalides · Musée Rodin · Musée d'Orsay · Les Deux Magots · Luxembourg
Day 3 – Eiffel Tower · Rue Cler · Pont Alexandre III · Seine River Cruise
Day 4 – Louvre · Palais-Royal · Tuileries · Musée de l'Orangerie
Day 5 – Arc de Triomphe · Palais Garnier · Montmartre · Le Marais
Day 6 – Train Day · Versailles
Day 7 – Train Day · Giverny
Day 1
1. Sainte-Chapelle~1 hr
A 13th-century royal chapel whose upper level is 15 stained-glass walls — the most intact Gothic glass in Europe, built by Louis IX to house the Crown of Thorns. Go on a bright morning when the light fires the windows.
Daily 9:00am - 7:00pm
A combined ticket with the Conciergerie next door costs barely more than either alone
2. Conciergerie~1 hr
The medieval royal palace turned Revolutionary prison — the Hall of the Men-at-Arms is the largest surviving Gothic secular hall in Europe, and Marie-Antoinette's reconstructed cell marks where she waited for the guillotine.
Daily 9:30am - 6:00pm
3. Notre-Dame de Paris~1 hr
The cathedral France measures itself from — the bronze marker outside the west front is kilometre zero for every road in the country. Begun 1163, gutted by fire and reopened after a five-year restoration that returned the vaults and the interior stone to a pale gold nobody alive had seen. Entry is free.
Monday - Friday 7:50am - 7:00pm
Saturday - Sunday 8:15am - 7:30pm
Free entry — book the free timed slot on the official site to skip a queue that runs 1–2 hr in summer
4. Panthéon~1 hr 15 min
Begun as a church for Sainte Geneviève and taken over by the Revolution as the resting place of the people France decides to honour — Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, Zola, Marie Curie, Josephine Baker. Foucault hung his pendulum under the dome in 1851 to prove the earth turns; the replacement still swings. The colonnade above gives one of the best rooftop views in the city.
Daily 10:00am - 6:30pm
206 steps · no lift
The dome colonnade is a separate timed climb, open April to October only
5. Rue Mouffetard · food street stroll~1 hr 15 min
A pedestrianised Roman road turned market hill — open-front fromageries, boulangeries, rôtisseries, a daily produce market at the bottom, and terrace cafés where locals eat dinner. Walk top to bottom, pastry in hand.
Open 24/7
Day 2
1. Les Invalides & Napoleon's Tomb~1 hr 30 min
Louis XIV built this as a hospital for wounded soldiers in 1670 and crowned it with a gilded dome that is still the tallest in Paris. Under it, Napoleon lies in six nested coffins inside a single block of red quartzite, sunk into an open crypt so that anyone looking at him has to bow. The Musée de l'Armée around it runs from medieval armour to 1945.
Daily 10:00am - 6:00pm
2. Musée Rodin~1 hr 30 min
Rodin rented rooms in the Hôtel Biron in 1908 and left the state everything he owned on condition it became his museum. The bronzes stand outdoors in a three-acre garden — The Thinker, The Gates of Hell, The Burghers of Calais — with Camille Claudel's work and Rodin's own Van Gogh and Monet inside.
Tuesday - Sunday 10:00am - 6:30pm
Closed Monday
3. Musée d'Orsay~2 hr 30 min
A 1900 railway station saved from demolition and turned into the greatest Impressionist collection anywhere — Monet, Renoir, Degas, Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, Van Gogh's self-portrait, Whistler's mother. Go straight to the fifth floor first; that is where the Impressionists hang, and where the giant station clock looks out over the Seine.
Tuesday - Sunday 9:30am - 6:00pm
Closed Monday
4. Les Deux Magots~1 hr
The literary café of Saint-Germain — Sartre and de Beauvoir's daily office, Hemingway's watering hole, Picasso's meeting spot. Order a café crème and the house hot chocolate, poured thick from a silver jug, from the terrace facing the oldest church in Paris.
5. Jardin du Luxembourg~1 hr
Marie de' Medici built the palace in 1612 because she was homesick for Florence, and the garden still splits the difference between French geometry and Italian terrace. The French Senate sits in the palace; everyone else gets 60 acres of gravel walks, the Medici Fountain in its plane-tree tunnel, and the octagonal basin where children have sailed rented wooden boats since the 1920s.
Daily 8:00am - 9:30pm
Gates close at dusk — as early as 4:30pm in midwinter
Day 3
1. Eiffel Tower~2 hr
Gustave Eiffel's 1889 iron tower — the World's Fair showpiece Paris refused to take down. Still the highest observation deck in the city and the clearest way to read its geography: Seine, La Défense, Montmartre, Montparnasse. Book the summit lift; the second floor is the better view but the top is the reason people queue.
Daily 9:00am - 11:45pm
Summit tickets open 60 days ahead and sell out first — book the moment the window opens
2. Rue Cler · food street stroll~1 hr
The 7th-arrondissement market street Rick Steves built his Paris chapter around — pedestrianised, two blocks, lined with family-run fromageries, boulangeries, and rôtisseries that have supplied the quartier for generations. Lunch here rather than at the tower.
Open 24/7
3. Pont Alexandre III~30 min
Built for the 1900 World's Fair and named for a Russian tsar, this is the most extravagant bridge in Paris — gilded Fames on four granite pylons, art-nouveau lamps, cherubs and nymphs the whole way across. A single low steel arch was engineered deliberately so it would not block the view of the Invalides dome behind it. Walk it at dusk on the way back to the hotel.
Open 24/7
4. Seine River Cruise · Bateaux-Mouches~1 hr 10 min
The stretch of river between the Pont d'Iéna and the Île Saint-Louis is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and an hour on the water is the only way to see all of it in sequence — Orsay, the Louvre, the Conciergerie, Notre-Dame, and back under the Pont Alexandre III. Book a late-afternoon departure: the monuments light up and the Eiffel Tower sparkles on the hour.
Daily 10:00am - 10:30pm
Departures every 30 min April to October, every 45 min in winter — the open top deck is worth the wind
Day 4
1. Musée du Louvre~3 hr
The most-visited museum on earth, in a palace that was a fortress before it was a royal residence. 35,000 works on display: the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the top of the Daru staircase, and the Grande Galerie of Italian painting. Pick two wings and accept you will not see the rest.
Wednesday - Monday 9:00am - 6:00pm
Closed Tuesday
Timed entry only — walk-up entry is not guaranteed and is refused outright in July and August
2. Palais-Royal~1 hr
Richelieu's 1633 palace, now enclosing the city's finest enclosed garden. Arcaded galleries on three sides house antique dealers, jewellers, and cafés. In the Cour d'Honneur: Daniel Buren's 1986 Les Deux Plateaux — 260 striped columns of varying heights set in granite and water channels.
3. Jardin des Tuileries~45 min
André Le Nôtre laid this out in 1664 before he was sent to Versailles, and the logic is the same: gravel allées, clipped hedges, and two round basins on a dead-straight axis running from the Louvre to the Concorde obelisk. The green metal chairs are free and movable — Parisians drag them to the water and stay for an hour.
Daily 7:30am - 7:30pm
Open until 11:00pm from late March to late September
4. Musée de l'Orangerie~1 hr 30 min
Eight wall-sized Monet Water Lilies canvases in two oval rooms the painter designed — lit from above, no right angles. One of the few museum experiences in Paris that earns the word immersive. Downstairs, the Walter-Guillaume collection holds Cézanne, Renoir, Modigliani, and Soutine.
Wednesday - Monday 9:00am - 6:00pm
Closed Tuesday
Day 5
1. Arc de Triomphe · rooftop~1 hr
Napoleon ordered it in 1806; it took 30 years to build. The 284-step climb ends on the best axial view in Paris — 12 avenues radiating out, Champs-Élysées to the Louvre one way, La Défense the other. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier below has had a flame relit every evening at 6:30pm since 1923.
Daily 10:00am - 10:30pm
284 steps · lift
Reach it by the underpass on the north side of the Champs-Élysées — never cross the roundabout on foot
2. Palais Garnier · Opéra~1 hr 15 min
Garnier's 1875 opera house — the building that defined Second Empire excess. Grand Staircase in white-pink-green marble, a cathedral-scale Grand Foyer, and Chagall's 1964 ceiling floating over the red-and-gold auditorium.
3. Sacré-Cœur & Montmartre~2 hr
The village Paris absorbed — winding lanes, the Place du Tertre painters' square, and the white travertine Basilique du Sacré-Cœur crowning the hill. Climb for the broadest free view over the whole city; the funicular takes the sting out of the steps and accepts a standard metro ticket.
4. Place des Vosges & Le Marais stroll~1 hr 30 min
The quarter Haussmann forgot — 17th-century hôtels particuliers, medieval lanes, and hidden courtyards still intact. Place des Vosges, Henri IV's 1612 pink-brick arcaded square, anchors a self-guided wander through Rue des Rosiers and the Village Saint-Paul. Victor Hugo's apartment at no. 6 is free to enter.
Open 24/7
Day 6
Paris Saint-Lazare → Versailles Rive Droite · SNCF Transilien L · 35min
book at: SNCF Connect
8:22am Saint-Lazare → 8:57am Versailles Rive Droite
8:52am Saint-Lazare → 9:27am Versailles Rive Droite
9:22am Saint-Lazare → 9:57am Versailles Rive Droite
1. Château de Versailles~2 hr 30 min
Louis XIV moved the French court out of Paris in 1682 and built the machine that ran it — 2,300 rooms designed so that watching the king get dressed was a political privilege. The State Apartments lead to the Hall of Mirrors: 73 metres, 357 mirrors, 17 windows onto the garden, and the room where the treaty ending the First World War was signed in 1919. UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Tuesday - Sunday 9:00am - 6:30pm
Closed Monday
Book the timed Passport ticket — it covers the palace, gardens, and Trianon estate on one entry, and the 9:00am slot beats the coach parties
2. Gardens of Versailles~1 hr 30 min
André Le Nôtre spent 40 years bending 800 hectares into straight lines. The Latona and Apollo fountains step down the central axis to the Grand Canal, where Louis XIV kept a fleet of gondolas; the bosquets on either side are outdoor rooms of hedge and statuary. On Musical Fountains days the whole waterworks runs to Baroque music, as it was designed to.
Daily 8:00am - 8:30pm
Free
Free except on Musical Fountains and Musical Gardens days, when a separate ticket applies
3. Domaine de Marie-Antoinette · Trianon~2 hr
The far end of the park, where the court rules did not apply. Louis XIV's pink-marble Grand Trianon was where he escaped his own palace; Marie-Antoinette was given the neighbouring Petit Trianon and built the Hameau de la Reine behind it — a working farm hamlet of thatched cottages, a dairy, and a mill, where she staged the simple life. The walk out across the park takes 25 minutes.
Tuesday - Sunday 12:00pm - 6:30pm
Closed Monday
Covered by the Passport ticket; the little road train from the château saves the 25-minute walk
Versailles Rive Droite → Paris Saint-Lazare · SNCF Transilien L · 35min
book at: SNCF Connect
6:28pm Versailles Rive Droite → 7:03pm Saint-Lazare
6:58pm Versailles Rive Droite → 7:33pm Saint-Lazare
7:28pm Versailles Rive Droite → 8:03pm Saint-Lazare
Day 7
Paris Saint-Lazare → Vernon-Giverny · SNCF Intercités · 50min
book at: SNCF Connect
8:20am Saint-Lazare → 9:10am Vernon
9:20am Saint-Lazare → 10:10am Vernon
10:20am Saint-Lazare → 11:10am Vernon
1. Fondation Monet — House & Gardens~2 hr
Monet bought this house in 1883 and spent 43 years planting the garden that became his greatest painting — the lily pond, the Japanese bridge, and the Clos Normand of irises and roses in his exact colour logic. Having seen the Water Lilies at the Orangerie and the Orsay canvases earlier in the week, this is where they were made. Closed in winter.
Daily 9:30am - 6:00pm
Open late March to early November only
2. Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny~1 hr
The village's own Impressionism museum, a few doors from Monet's gate — rotating exhibitions on the movement and the Giverny art colony, with a garden of its own designed in drifts of single-colour planting.
Daily 10:00am - 6:00pm
Cash Only
Open late March to early November only
3. Giverny Village & Église Sainte-Radegonde~45 min
The single lane of stone-and-flower houses that the Giverny art colony settled in the 1880s. At the top sits the 11th-century church of Sainte-Radegonde and the village cemetery, where Monet and his family are buried.
Open 24/7
Vernon-Giverny → Paris Saint-Lazare · SNCF Intercités · 50min
book at: SNCF Connect
5:10pm Vernon → 6:00pm Saint-Lazare
6:10pm Vernon → 7:00pm Saint-Lazare
7:25pm Vernon → 8:15pm Saint-Lazare
Weekly Closures
Museums, Palaces & Market Streets · Closed Monday and Tuesday
Boutiques & Department Stores · Closed Sunday
Tours
Viator
Guided stair climb of the Eiffel Tower to the 2nd floor with a host, plus an optional lift to the summit for the panoramic Seine-and-skyline view.
2 hr · small group
Île de la Cité walk covering the stained-glass upper chapel of Sainte-Chapelle and the Conciergerie, Marie-Antoinette's prison, with pre-reserved skip-the-line entry.
2 hr 30 min · small group
Round-trip small-group half-day to Giverny — Monet's house and the Flower and Water gardens with the Japanese bridge that inspired the Water Lilies — with transport from central Paris.
4 hr 30 min · small group
Full-day small-group trip to the Champagne region — the coronation cathedral of Reims plus cellar visits and six tastings at a major Champagne house and a family grower, round-trip from Paris.
11 hr · 8
Coach half-day from Paris to Giverny with reserved entry to Monet's house and gardens, an alternative departure for the day-trip if the small-group slot is full.
6 hr · small group
GetYourGuide
Round-trip guided half-day to Giverny — Monet's house and the Flower and Japanese water-lily gardens — with an English-speaking guide and transport from central Paris.
5 hr · small group
Reserved-access guided sightseeing tour of the Eiffel Tower — the story of the iron tower told by a host, then up to the 2nd floor with the option to continue to the summit by lift.
2 hr · small group
Guided walk through the 19th-century covered passages of the Grands Boulevards — the glass-roofed arcades of shops, cafés, and galleries that pre-date the department store.
1 hr 30 min · small group
Full-day coach trip from Paris to the island abbey of Mont Saint-Michel — the medieval Benedictine monastery rising from the Normandy tidal flats — with a guided visit and free time in the village.
14 hr · small group
Full-day guided trip to the Normandy landing beaches — Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery at Colleville, and Pointe du Hoc — with a historian guide and lunch, round-trip from Paris.
13 hr · small group
TripAdvisor
1. Giverny Small-Group Half Day Trip with Monet's Gardens from Paris · TripAdvisor · 4.8 · 900+ reviews
Round-trip small-group half-day to Giverny — Monet's home and the Flower and Water gardens with the Japanese bridge — with a guide and transport from central Paris.
4 hr 30 min · small group
Skip-the-line guided Eiffel Tower tour to the 2nd-floor observation deck with summit access, the tower's history told by a small-group guide.
2 hr · small group
Île de la Cité Gothic tour — Sainte-Chapelle's stained glass and the Conciergerie — with skip-the-line tickets and a licensed guide.
2 hr 30 min · small group
Guided walking tour through the historic heart of Paris — the Île de la Cité, the riverside quays, and the Right Bank landmarks — led by a local guide.
2 hr 15 min · group
5. Eiffel Tower Guided Tour by Stairs with Optional Summit by Lift · TripAdvisor · 4.8 · 3000+ reviews
Guided climb of the Eiffel Tower by stairs to the 2nd floor with a host, with the option to continue to the summit by lift for the panoramic view over the city and the Seine.
2 hr · small group
Cappuccino
Noir · 4.5 · 500+ reviews
Monday - Friday 8:00am - 6:00pm
Saturday - Sunday 9:00am - 6:00pm
Café Nuances · 4.4 · 600+ reviews
Bacha Coffee · 4.5 · 1000+ reviews
Café Fino · 4.6 · 500+ reviews
Café Joyeux · 4.5 · 2000+ reviews
Restaurants Near Hotel
Le Boudoir · 4.4 · 700+ reviews
Modern French bistronomy · charcuterie maison, seasonal tasting plates.
Monday - Friday 12:00pm - 2:30pm · 7:30pm - 10:30pm
Closed Saturday & Sunday
Chez Savy · 4.4 · 800+ reviews
Aveyronnais bistro · 1930s Art Deco room — foie gras, côte de bœuf, soufflé.
Monday - Friday 12:00pm - 2:30pm · 7:00pm - 10:30pm
Closed Saturday & Sunday
Chez André · 4.2 · 2000+ reviews
Classic 1936 Parisian bistro · escargots, frog legs, onion soup, crème brûlée.
Daily 12:00pm - 12:00am
Le Mini Palais · 4.2 · 1000+ reviews
Grand Palais brasserie · seasonal French menu by Eric Frechon · terrace.
Daily 12:00pm - 11:00pm
Dada · 4.3 · 2000+ reviews
Classic Parisian brasserie · all-day terrace, steak tartare, croque-madame.
Daily 7:00am - 11:00pm
Downtown Restaurants
Le Procope · 4.4 · 1000+ reviews
Paris's oldest brasserie · 1686 — Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot's table, 6e.
Sunday - Wednesday 11:30am - 12:00am
Thursday - Saturday 11:30am - 1:00am
Bouillon Chartier · 4.3 · 40000+ reviews
1896 listed bouillon · grand belle-époque hall, classic French at modest prices.
Daily 11:30am - 12:00am
Le Caveau du Palais · 4.0 · 500+ reviews
Classic French bistro on Place Dauphine · the island's oldest terrace, 1e.
Daily 12:00pm - 10:30pm
Brasserie Lipp · 4.0 · 5000+ reviews
1880 listed brasserie · Alsatian classics in a Monument historique room, 6e.
Daily 9:00am - 12:45am
Chez Janou · 4.3 · 8000+ reviews
Provençal bistro near Place des Vosges · pastis and chocolate mousse, 3e.
Daily 12:00pm - 12:00am
Dining Areas
Le Marais
Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Local Tastes
Macaron
Two almond-meringue shells sandwiching flavoured ganache or buttercream. Smooth domed shell with a "foot" — the Parisian version every pastry chef copies worldwide.
Croque-Madame
Grilled ham-and-gruyère sandwich topped with mornay sauce and a sunny-side-up egg. The "madame" is the egg — the "monsieur" drops it. A Parisian café classic since around 1910.
Paris-Brest
Wheel-shaped choux ring filled with hazelnut praline cream, dusted with icing sugar, topped with almonds. Created in 1910 to mark the Paris–Brest–Paris bicycle race — the wheel shape is deliberate.
Soupe à l'Oignon Gratinée
Slow-caramelised onion soup in beef stock, topped with country bread and molten Gruyère browned into a lid. A Les Halles standard that became a brasserie institution.
Food Delivery
Uber Eats
Foreign number: accepted. — it is the same Uber account as the ride app, so a foreign number already verified there signs straight in.
The widest roster in Paris, from the 8th's bistros to late-night kebabs, with live courier tracking; fees stack on small orders and hotel deliveries are handed over at the front desk, so add the room number to the note.
Deliveroo
Foreign number: not required. — sign-up runs on Google, Apple, Facebook or email with no phone field at all, so no verification code has to arrive.
Deliveroo's strongest city after London — dense coverage of the centre with the better restaurants of the 8th and 17th on it, grocery runs from Carrefour and Monoprix, and a Plus subscription that waives delivery fees; couriers rarely cross the Périphérique.
Shows, Performances & Concerts
Palais Garnier — Opera & Ballet
The Paris Opera's house for ballet and chamber opera, under Chagall's painted ceiling. Book the season calendar ahead.
Sainte-Chapelle — Classical Concerts
Candle-lit concerts under Sainte-Chapelle's stained-glass walls — Vivaldi, Pachelbel, Albinoni — in 13th-century vault acoustics.
Opéra Bastille
The Paris Opera's modern house · 1989, Carlos Ott — 2,700 seats for grand opera and large ballet, complementing Garnier.
Philharmonie de Paris
Jean Nouvel's concert hall in Parc de la Villette — home of the Orchestre de Paris, among Europe's most acoustically precise.
Moulin Rouge — Féerie
The 1889 Montmartre cabaret that invented the modern can-can · two shows a night, 60 Doriss Girls, dinner or champagne-only seating.
Getting Around
Uber
Foreign number: accepted. — the verification code arrives by SMS on a foreign carrier, and an existing Uber account from home signs straight in.
The biggest fleet in Paris and the one with a car on the Champs-Élysées side in two or three minutes at most hours; prices jump at the evening peak and on strike days, and a licensed G7 taxi from a rank is often no dearer then. Uber Comfort is worth the small premium on a long cross-town ride.
Bolt
Foreign number: accepted. — the SMS code reaches a foreign carrier with roaming on; WhatsApp verification is offered if it stalls.
Usually a few euros cheaper than Uber for the same ride across central Paris and worth a side-by-side check before booking; the fleet is smaller, so waits stretch past ten minutes in the outer arrondissements and late at night.
FreeNow
Foreign number: accepted. — the SMS code arrives on a foreign number with roaming on, and sign-in by Apple or Google skips it.
Books licensed Paris taxis rather than private-hire cars, so it can use the bus lanes and the city's fixed long-distance fares; the app is clunkier than Uber, but at rush hour a taxi in the bus lane beats a VTC stuck on the Périphérique.
Train Stations Near Hotel
Gare Saint-Lazare
Transilien J, L → Paris suburbs · Intercités → Normandy.
Gare du Nord
RER B → CDG Airport, Paris suburbs · TGV inOui, Eurostar → Lille, London, Brussels.
Day Trips by Train
Fontainebleau · 40 min
A royal château with 1,500 rooms spanning every French style — François I Renaissance to Napoleon III Empire — set at the edge of a great forest. Transilien R trains depart Gare de Lyon direct to Fontainebleau-Avon.
book at: SNCF Connect or Omio
Reims · 45 min
The cathedral where 25 French kings were crowned, the Palais du Tau beside it, and miles of Gallo-Roman chalk cellars where Champagne is aged — Taittinger and Veuve Clicquot both run cellar visits with a tasting. Direct TGV inOui.
book at: SNCF Connect or Omio
Amiens · 1h 10 min
Notre-Dame d'Amiens — the largest Gothic cathedral in France, twice the volume of Notre-Dame de Paris, with the original polychrome interior intact. Direct TGV, Gare du Nord.
book at: SNCF Connect or Omio
Chartres · 1 hr 10 min
The benchmark High Gothic cathedral, completed 1220 and largely untouched since — 176 medieval stained-glass panels in the famous "Chartres blue," a labyrinth set into the nave floor, and two mismatched spires. UNESCO World Heritage Site. Direct TER trains.
book at: SNCF Connect or Omio
Rouen · 1 hr 25 min
Normandy's medieval capital — Rouen Cathedral is the Gothic façade Monet painted 30 times. The half-timbered lanes around the Gros-Horloge are the best-preserved in northern France, and Place du Vieux-Marché marks where Joan of Arc was burned in 1431.
book at: SNCF Connect or Omio
Strasbourg · 1 hr 48 min
The Franco-German capital of Alsace — Petite France's canals and timbered winemakers' houses are a UNESCO quarter. The pink-sandstone cathedral spire was Europe's tallest until 1874. Compact, walkable, lunch in a winstub.
book at: SNCF Connect or Omio
Lyon · 2 hrs
France's second city and gastronomic capital — Vieux Lyon's Renaissance traboules, the hilltop basilica of Fourvière with Roman-amphitheatre remains, and the silk-weavers' Croix-Rousse. A bouchon lunch is as non-negotiable as any monument.
book at: SNCF Connect or Omio
Michelin Restaurants
Épicure
Classic French · Le Bristol · Chef Arnaud Faye · grand garden-view room.
Alléno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen
Modern French · sauce-forward contemporary cuisine · Chef Yannick Alléno.
Pierre Gagnaire
Creative French · avant-garde multi-plate tasting experience.
Le Cinq
Classic French · Four Seasons George V · grand belle-époque dining room.
Le Pré Catelan
Classic French · Chef Frédéric Anton · Bois de Boulogne pavilion setting.
Not shown: 5 · 16 · 103 more in Paris
Heads Up
Louvre & Musée d'Orsay — Timed slots only
Both sell timed entry and turn walk-ups away at peak times; the Louvre refuses walk-ups outright in July and August.
Notre-Dame — Paid tickets are a scam
Cathedral entry is free. The only booking is a free timed slot on the official site or app; every site selling entry tickets is reselling nothing.
Versailles — Monday closure & noon Trianon
Palace and Trianon estate close every Monday while the gardens stay open. The Trianon does not open until 12:00pm — palace first, Trianon last.
Palais Garnier — Auditorium & security
The auditorium closes often for rehearsals with no warning or refund; timed-entry tickets still face 20–30 min security queues.
Fondation Monet Giverny — Seasonal closure
Monet's house and gardens close from early November to late March — the Giverny day trip does not run in winter.
Hiking
Forêt de Meudon · Easy
A wooded loop through oak and pine forest past the Étang de Villebon.
6 km loop · 100 m ascent
1 hr 45 min
Forêt de Saint-Germain-en-Laye · Moderate
A royal forest loop past the château, with long straight forest rides.
9 km loop · 150 m ascent
2 hr 30 min
Worth Knowing
A Relic Pricier Than Its Chapel, and a Lake That's Really There
Sainte-Chapelle was built to be a jewel box, but the treasure inside it was worth vastly more than the box itself. King Louis IX bought what he believed was Christ's Crown of Thorns from Baldwin II, the cash-strapped Latin emperor of Constantinople, who was pawning off Byzantine relics to pay his own creditors. The relic alone cost several times more than the entire chapel built to display it — the delicate stained-glass masterpiece you're standing in was, financially speaking, just the frame.
The underground lake beneath Palais Garnier isn't a novelist's invention — it's a real cistern, built because the site's groundwater kept flooding the foundation during construction and engineers needed somewhere to redirect it. Crime reporter Gaston Leroux saw it and turned it into the phantom's lair for his novel decades later, but the water tank never stopped serving its actual purpose: Paris firefighters still use it today to train for swimming in total darkness.
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