The Eiffel Tower is the 330-meter iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars that turned Paris into a skyline anyone can recognize. Built for the 1889 World's Fair, it is the most visited paid monument in the world, with about seven million visitors...
The Louvre is the world's largest museum and the most visited, in a former royal palace on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris. It shows about 35,000 works, from prehistory to the 21st century, across three huge wings: Richelieu, Denon and...
Notre-Dame is the Gothic cathedral of Paris, on the Île de la Cité, and one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture. Begun in 1163 and finished in 1345, it was France's most visited monument, with about 12 million visitors a year...
The Arc de Triomphe is the great triumphal arch at the western end of the Champs-Élysées in Paris. It stands almost 50 meters high, 45 wide and 22 deep, and honors those who fought for France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Until 1938...
The Champs-Élysées is Paris's grandest avenue: 1.9 kilometers, 70 meters wide, running straight from the obelisk of Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. It is the stage of the city's parades and one of the most famous streets in the...
The Parc de Bagatelle is a park of 24 hectares inside the Bois de Boulogne, on the western edge of Paris, around a small Neoclassical château. It is part of the city's botanical garden and famous above all for its roses.
The highlight is...
The Quai de Bourbon is the riverside street along the western tip of the Île Saint-Louis, in the heart of Paris: a quiet row of 17th-century mansions facing the Seine and the Right Bank, loved by locals for a stroll or a picnic.
At number...
The Sacré-Cœur, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, crowns the hill of Montmartre in Paris: a white church of domes, visible from all over the city, overlooking the whole city from the top of the hill. After the Eiffel Tower, it is the second most...
The Berges de Seine are the lower riverbanks of the Left Bank in central Paris, between the Musée d'Orsay and the Pont de l'Alma: an old expressway along the water, closed to cars in 2013 and turned into a promenade for walkers, runners and...
The Sacré-Cœur is the white basilica on the top of Montmartre, in Paris, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Built between 1875 and 1914 in a mix of Romanesque and Byzantine styles, it is among the most visited landmarks of the city, second...
The Musée d'Orsay is the museum of French art from 1848 to 1914, in a grand railway station on the Left Bank of the Seine in Paris. It holds the world's largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces, about 3,000 works,...
The Montparnasse Tower is a 210-meter office skyscraper in the Montparnasse district, on the Left Bank, and the tallest building within the city limits of Paris. It is also home to one of the best views of the city, from an observation deck on...
Montmartre is the hill of the 18th arrondissement in Paris, 130 meters high and about 60 hectares, famous for its artists, its cabarets and the white dome of the Sacré-Cœur on its summit. It is steep, bohemian and one of the most visited...
The Moulin Rouge is the cabaret with the red windmill on its roof, on Boulevard de Clichy at Place Blanche, at the foot of Montmartre in the Pigalle district: the birthplace of the modern can-can, and a byword for Belle Époque Paris nights since...
The Tuileries Garden is the formal park between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde, in the heart of Paris: 25.5 hectares of French symmetry, long perspectives, ponds, statues and green chairs.
At the east end, near the Louvre, the Grand...
The Hôtel de Ville is the city hall of Paris, a palace in French Renaissance style on its own large square in the 4th arrondissement, on the Right Bank. The city has been governed from this spot since 1357, and the building has been a stage of...
The Luxembourg Gardens, Paris's "Luco", are a 23-hectare garden in the 6th arrondissement, the green heart of the Left Bank. They mix formal French lawns and alleys with the play of a neighborhood park, with the Luxembourg Palace on the north...
Green pipes for water, blue for air, yellow for electricity, red for people on the move: the Centre Pompidou wears its insides on the outside. In Paris, it opened in 1977 and is home to the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the largest museum of...
Place de la Concorde is the largest square in Paris, 7.6 hectares of open stone at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées, where the Tuileries Garden ends and the avenue begins. At its center stands a 3,300-year-old Egyptian obelisk, framed by two...
La Madeleine is a church in Paris that looks like a Greek temple: a rectangle ringed by 52 Corinthian columns, standing at the end of Rue Royale, a few steps from Place de la Concorde. It is a temple in shape, standing on a raised...
Le Marais is the historic district of Paris on the Right Bank, across the 3rd and 4th arrondissements, full of aristocratic mansions, small museums, galleries, boutiques and narrow streets. It is one of the best places in the city to walk with no...
The Hôtel Gaillard is a neo-Renaissance mansion on Place du Général-Catroux, in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, that looks like a Loire Valley château dropped into the city. Since 2019 it has housed Citéco, the Bank of France's museum of...
The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (Cathédrale Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky) is the Russian Orthodox cathedral of Paris, on Rue Daru in the 8th arrondissement: five gilded onion domes in a style its builders called "Byzantine Muscovite", consecrated in...
Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre is one of the oldest churches in Paris, a small Gothic church in the Latin Quarter, just across the Seine from Notre-Dame. Begun around 1170, since 1889 it has belonged to the Melkite Greek Catholics, an Eastern church in...
Saint-Séverin is a Flamboyant Gothic church in the Latin Quarter of Paris, on lively Rue Saint-Séverin. Once the parish of the University of Paris students, it is one of the oldest churches still standing on the Left Bank.
The masterpiece...
Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois is the Gothic church directly across from the Louvre, in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. For two centuries it was the parish of the palace, and many of the artists and architects who worked there are buried...
The Tour Saint-Jacques (Saint James's Tower) is a lone Flamboyant Gothic bell tower, 52 meters tall, rising from a small garden on Rue de Rivoli, a few steps from Place du Châtelet. It is all that is left of a medieval church torn down during the...
Parc André-Citroën is a modern park of 14 hectares on the left bank of the Seine, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, built where the Citroën car factory once stood. When it opened in 1992, it was the largest new park in Paris in over a...
Parc Georges-Brassens is a neighborhood park of almost 8 hectares in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, laid out in 1984 on the site of an old horse market and slaughterhouse. It is named after the singer Georges Brassens, who lived...
Les Invalides is the monumental complex in Paris's 7th arrondissement built by Louis XIV as a home and hospital for his old soldiers. Today it is France's great military site: a museum, a necropolis, and the tomb of Napoleon under a golden...
The Rue des Trois-Frères is a street on the hill of Montmartre, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, best known for the grocery in the film Amélie. It runs between Rue d'Orsel and Rue Ravignan.
The main reason to come is number 56, on the...
Lamarck – Caulaincourt is a Métro station on line 12 on the slopes of Montmartre, and one of the most photographed in Paris: its single entrance sits between two staircases that climb the hill around it.
The entrance is the thing to see: a...
The Sainte-Chapelle is the royal chapel on the Île de la Cité in Paris, built between 1242 and 1248 by Louis IX to hold the relics of the Passion. It is a masterpiece of Rayonnant Gothic, famous for walls that are almost entirely stained...
The Catacombs of Paris are a vast underground ossuary beneath the Left Bank, built in old limestone quarries south of Place Denfert-Rochereau. They hold the remains of more than six million people, stacked along tunnels cut into the rock, and...
The Champ de Mars is the long lawn in the 7th arrondissement of Paris that runs from the foot of the Eiffel Tower to the École Militaire: the classic spot for a picnic with the tower as a backdrop.
From the lawns the view takes in the...
The Musée Rodin is the museum of the sculptor Auguste Rodin, in an eighteenth-century mansion with a rose garden on Rue de Varenne, in the 7th arrondissement. Its collection includes The Thinker, The Kiss and The Gates of Hell, and the garden is...
The Jardin des Plantes is the main botanical garden in France, on the Left Bank of the Seine in the 5th arrondissement: 28 hectares of flower beds, greenhouses, centuries-old trees and natural history galleries, with a small zoo thrown...
The Stade de France is the national stadium of France, in Saint-Denis just north of Paris: the home of the French football and rugby teams and the largest stadium in the country, with more than 80,000 seats.
The building is worth a look...
The Galeries nationales du Grand Palais are the exhibition halls in the north wing of the Grand Palais, near the Champs-Élysées. They host Paris's big temporary shows, the kind that draw queues around the block, inside one of the most spectacular...
Saint-Germain-des-Prés is a Romanesque and Gothic church on the Left Bank, considered the oldest church in Paris, and the heart of one of the city's best-known quarters. Its stout bell tower, begun around 990, stands among the cafés and bookshops...