City guide · France
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
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.
Editorial responsibility: 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
November · November averages only 10.4°C by day in Paris, with 51.9 mm precipitation across about ten days.
Ranked by importance — sitelinks, pageviews and heritage status, not editor preference.
58 places match
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Assemblée nationale
The Palais Bourbon is where the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament, has sat since the Revolution turned a princess's private mansion into the seat of the republic's elected chamber.
Palais de l'Élysée
The Élysée Palace is where the President of France lives and works, and it is closed to visitors for all but one weekend a year.
Château de Vincennes is a medieval fortress on the eastern edge of Paris, beside the Bois de Vincennes.
At roughly 995 hectares, the Bois de Vincennes is the largest public park inside Paris, wrapping the eastern edge of the 12th arrondissement.
Opéra Bastille opened on 13 July 1989, timed to the bicentenary of the storming of the Bastille prison, on the footprint of the old Bastille railway station at Place de la Bastille.
Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris
Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris is the city of Paris's own museum of modern art, occupying the east wing of the Palais de Tokyo on Avenue du Président Wilson.
The Musee Marmottan Monet occupies a former hunting lodge built for the Duke of Valmy on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, bought in the late nineteenth century by the businessman Jules Marmottan and later expanded by his son…
Musée Grévin is a wax museum on Boulevard Montmartre, opened in 1882.
Jeu de Paume
The Jeu de Paume is a photography and moving-image gallery in the Tuileries Garden's north-west corner, in a building constructed in 1861 as a court for jeu de paume, the indoor precursor of tennis played by Napoleon III's court.
The Palais Bourbon, on the Left Bank facing Place de la Concorde across the Seine, is the seat of the French National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament — a working legislature, not a former palace turned museum.
The Palais de Tokyo is Paris's largest centre for contemporary art, occupying the eastern wing of a building raised for the 1937 International Exposition by architects Jean-Claude Dondel, Andre Aubert, Paul Viard and Marcel Dastugue.
Musée Jacquemart-André is a Paris museum housed in the former private mansion of Édouard André and Nélie Jacquemart.
Aquarium de Paris - Cinéaqua
Aquarium de Paris occupies the old quarry tunnels beneath the Trocadero hill, first opened as the Aquarium du Trocadero for the 1878 Exposition Universelle, one of the earliest public aquariums built in France.
The Musee d'art et d'histoire du Judaisme, known as the MAHJ, is France's museum of Jewish art and history, opened in 1998 in the Hotel de Saint-Aignan, a 17th-century mansion in the Marais, 3rd arrondissement.
Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
Musée de la Légion d'Honneur et des Ordres de Chevalerie
Musée Bolesław Biegas is an exhibition devoted to the Polish sculptor, painter, playwright and essayist Bolesław Biegas, who lived from 1877 to 1954.
UGC
Cinema Mac Mahon
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.
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
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
Suggested stay for a first visit: 4–5 days. Group the central landmarks across the first days, then leave separate time for a major museum and Montmartre or another Paris district. Versailles lies outside the city and needs an additional excursion day if chosen.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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