Country guide
France is 18 regions and 632,702 km2, and five of those regions are overseas - French Guiana in South America, the French West Indies, islands in the Indian and...
Photograph · Pierre Blaché · CC0
Reviewed by Elena Voss · Roavina Travel Editor
France is 18 regions and 632,702 km2, and five of those regions are overseas - French Guiana in South America, the French West Indies, islands in the Indian and Pacific oceans. Metropolitan France alone runs from the Rhine to the Atlantic and from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, so a week here is a choice rather than a circuit. Of the 69.1 million people estimated in 2026, more than 13 million are in the Paris metropolitan area, which is why the capital tends to win the first visit. The corners - Alpine, Atlantic, Mediterranean - are further from one another than the map's familiarity suggests.
Checked 2026-08-25
Every city catalogued in this country so far, ranked by how much there is to see.
Photograph · Yann Caradec from Paris, France · CC BY-SA 2.0
Seasonal closures come from recorded opening hours.
Ranked by importance — sitelinks, pageviews and heritage status, not editor preference.
185 places match
Category
Typical visit duration
Musée national Picasso-Paris
The Musee Picasso occupies the Hotel Sale, a seventeenth-century mansion in the Marais built in the 1650s for Pierre Aubert de Fontenay, a salt-tax collector whose unpopular trade gave the building its nickname, sale meaning salted.
Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel
The Arc de triomphe du Carrousel stands in the Cour Napoleon, between the Louvre's wings and I. M.
Bourse de Commerce
The Bourse de Commerce is a Paris contemporary art museum housed in a historic circular building near Les Halles and the Louvre district.
Fondation Louis Vuitton
The Fondation Louis Vuitton is a contemporary art museum in the Bois de Boulogne, commissioned by Bernard Arnault, chairman of the luxury group LVMH, and designed by the American architect Frank Gehry.
Musée Grévin is a wax museum on Boulevard Montmartre, opened in 1882.
Jardin des Plantes
The Jardin des plantes is Paris's main botanical garden and the founding site of the Museum national d'Histoire naturelle, on the Left Bank in the 5th arrondissement, between the Seine and the Austerlitz rail yards.
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…
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.
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…
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.
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…
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 Ecole Militaire is an operating French military academy, not a museum, and it is not open to the public.
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.
Parc Monceau
Parc Monceau began in 1769 as a private pleasure garden for Philippe d'Orleans, Duke of Chartres, laid out by the writer and painter Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle, in the English landscape style then fashionable as a counterpoint to the…
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.
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.
Musée Guimet
The Musee national des Arts asiatiques - Guimet holds the largest collection of Asian art outside Asia itself, spanning Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia in one national 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.
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.
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.
Colonne de Juillet
The Colonne de Juillet stands at the centre of Place de la Bastille and commemorates the July Revolution of 1830 — the Trois Glorieuses, three days of fighting on 27-29 July that drove King Charles X from the throne.
Palais de Justice de Paris
The Palais de Justice is the historic seat of the French judiciary on the Ile de la Cite, built on the site of the medieval Palais de la Cite, the residence of the Capetian kings from the 10th century until…
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.
Ten to fourteen days supports four or five days in Paris plus one coherent regional direction, such as Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, or Marseille. Avoid routing every extension back through Paris, because even fast TGV journeys leave local connection time at each end.
France applies Schengen entry rules, but the required passport validity or visa still depends on nationality and route. France-Visas is the official place to verify the exact requirement before booking and again before entering from outside Schengen.
TGV trains join France's largest cities, while TER services handle regional links and many rural areas still favour a car. Long-distance reservations may be mandatory, and each city retains its own urban ticket system rather than accepting one national visitor card.
April to June and September to October suit the Paris-plus-region route described here. Alpine access, Mediterranean heat, Atlantic weather, and rural seasonal services differ enough that the selected second region should determine the final dates.
France uses the euro (EUR). Bank cards are common, yet a small euro reserve remains useful for markets or local machines; confirm any terminal conversion choice before accepting it because this page does not record changing fees.
For urgent help anywhere in France, call 112; medical emergencies also use 15 and police matters 17. The electrical standard is 230 V with Type C and E plugs. This dataset has no recorded national tap-water finding, so consult the municipality or lodging for the specific stop.
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