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City guide · France

Paris

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 ins...

Photograph · Yann Caradec from Paris, France · CC BY-SA 2.0

7,605 Places
20 Districts
Suggested stay
4–5 days
Getting around
Métro and on foot

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

Reviewed by Elena Voss · Roavina Travel Editor

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.

Checked 2026-08-23

Practical information

Language spoken
French
French is the language of the Republic under Article 2 of the Constitution
Dialling code
+33 1
Paris and the Île-de-France; drop the leading 0 of 01 when calling from abroad
Currency
Euro (€, EUR)
France has used the euro as its official currency since 2002
Emergency number
112
One number across the country; 15 reaches an ambulance directly
Plug type
Type E · 220 V
Round-pin sockets use a projecting earth pin
Tap water
Safe to drink
The health ministry says tap water may be consumed safely unless local authorities issue specific advice

Planning a visit

September · September remains mild in Paris at 20.8°C by day and 12.5°C at night, with 54.7 mm precipitation.

  1. January: viable with meaningful trade-offs
  2. February: viable with meaningful trade-offs
  3. March: good time to visit
  4. April: good time to visit
  5. May: best time to visit
  6. June: best time to visit
  7. July: best time to visit
  8. August: best time to visit
  9. September: best time to visit — current month
  10. October: good time to visit
  11. November: viable with meaningful trade-offs
  12. December: viable with meaningful trade-offs

Sources

Top things to see

Ranked by importance — sitelinks, pageviews and heritage status, not editor preference.

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52 places match

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Category

Historic monuments 52 Museums 3 Places of worship 14 Nature sites 24 Viewpoints 0 Food and drink 10 Markets and shopping 9 Entertainment 0 Nightlife 0 Family attractions 0 Art and culture 10 Activities 1

Typical visit duration

Up to 1 hour 52 1 to 2 hours 9 Half a day or more 1

Interests

History 52 Art 0 Museums 0 Nature 0 Sea and beach 0 Viewpoints 0
  1. Champ de Mars Champ de Mars
    07 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
  2. Panthéon Panthéon
    08 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
  3. place de la Concorde place de la Concorde
    09 20 min

    place de la Concorde

    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
  4. Grand Mosque of Paris Grand Mosque of Paris
    10 45 min

    Grand Mosque of Paris

    Grande Mosquée de 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
  5. Palais-Royal Palais-Royal
    11 45 min

    Palais-Royal

    Palais Royal

    The Palais-Royal was a cardinal's house that became Europe's first shopping centre and then the place the Revolution started. Jacques Lemercier built it for Cardinal Richelieu between 1633 and 1639 as the Palais-Cardinal.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  6. Bastille Bastille
    12 20 min

    Bastille

    Ruines de la 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
  7. Luxembourg Palace Luxembourg Palace
    13 20 min

    Luxembourg Palace

    Palais du Luxembourg

    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
  8. Louvre Pyramid Louvre Pyramid
    14 20 min

    Louvre Pyramid

    Pyramide du Louvre

    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
  9. University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne
    15 1 hour

    University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne

    Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - Centre 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
  10. La Madeleine La Madeleine
    16 30 min

    La Madeleine

    Église de 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
  11. place Vendôme place Vendôme
    17 20 min

    place Vendôme

    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
  12. Pont Neuf Pont Neuf
    18 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
  13. Hôtel de Ville Hôtel de Ville
    19 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
  14. Chapelle expiatoire Chapelle expiatoire
    20 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
  15. arc de triomphe du Carrousel arc de triomphe du Carrousel
    21 15 min

    arc de triomphe du Carrousel

    Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel

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

    • High
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 1er Arrondissement
  16. Chaillot Palace Chaillot Palace
    22 30 min

    Chaillot Palace

    Palais de Chaillot

    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…

    • High
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  17. Hôtel Matignon Hôtel Matignon
    23 1 hour

    Hôtel Matignon

    Hôtel de 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…

    • High
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  18. Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris
    24 15 min

    Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris

    Tombe du Soldat inconnu

    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.

    • High
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  19. place de la République place de la République
    25 20 min

    place de la République

    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…

    • High
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 11e Arrondissement
  20. École Militaire École Militaire
    26 15 min

    École Militaire

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

    • High
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 7e Arrondissement
  21. Luxor Obelisk Luxor Obelisk
    27 10 min

    Luxor Obelisk

    Obélisque de Louxor

    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.

    • High
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 8e Arrondissement
  22. galerie Vivienne galerie Vivienne
    28 20 min

    galerie Vivienne

    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.

    • High
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 2e Arrondissement
  23. Jardin des serres d'Auteuil Jardin des serres d'Auteuil
    29 1 hour

    Jardin des serres d'Auteuil

    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.

    • High
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 16e Arrondissement
  24. Arènes de Lutèce Arènes de Lutèce
    30 30 min

    Arènes de Lutèce

    Cavae des 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.

    • High
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 5e Arrondissement
  25. Saint-Jacques Tower Saint-Jacques Tower
    31 15 min

    Saint-Jacques Tower

    Tour Saint-Jacques

    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.

    • High
    • Historic monument
    • Paris 4e Arrondissement
Show 21 more places

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

More city guides

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.