Paris

Meant to come down twenty years after the 1889 exposition, it survived on the aerial at its top. The lift wait is long, so the stairs to the second floor stay busy; above that only the lift runs. The sparkle lasts 5 minutes on the hour after dark.

It shuts on Tuesdays, and only Wednesday and Friday run to 9pm. Even with a timed slot the hall under the glass pyramid fills, so the Carrousel entrance underground is faster. Clear the wall of people at the Mona Lisa first, then walk the rest.

A railway station of 1900 turned into a gallery, so the back of the great clock face is now a window onto the halls. It closes on Mondays and runs late only on Thursday nights, so pairing it with the Louvre means picking the right weekday.

The 2019 fire took the spire and the roof, and the cathedral opened again in December 2024. Going inside costs nothing, and a free slot booked a few days ahead means no queue. The towers are ticketed apart, up a narrow stair that sends bags to a locker.

Saint Louis raised the chapel to house the Crown of Thorns, so almost no wall is left and the thing stands on glass. The upper windows need direct sun to come alive, which makes a clear morning a different visit altogether.

The palace is forty minutes from Paris by rail and closes on Mondays. The grounds dwarf the building and the walk to the Grand Trianon eats half a day, so a hired bicycle pays for itself. On fountain days the garden is charged for too.

By day, with nothing on the stage, a ticket gets you into the auditorium and the great staircase. The ceiling Chagall painted went up in 1964 and clashes with the gilt on purpose. A water tank sits under the stage, and the fire brigade dives in it.

A whole hill given over to graves, the paths forking constantly and the ground rising and dropping. Without a map from the gate you can leave without finding even Chopin.

Stairs climb to the top and the funicular takes a metro ticket. Painters on Place du Tertre each work a numbered pitch. A vineyard on the north slope holds a harvest feast in October. Pickpockets work the crowded lane, so wear your bag in front.

The green boxes clamped to the Seine parapet are assigned pitches, handed out by the city one licence at a time. Nothing opens in the rain, so pick a dry day if you mean to dig through second-hand shelves.

Napoleon ordered the arch for his victories; it now rises from a roundabout fed by twelve avenues. Never dash across the traffic; use the underpass from the Champs-Elysees. Under the arch, the Unknown Soldier's flame is relit every evening at 6:30pm.

Consecrated in 1919 on the summit of Montmartre, its stone gives off a white residue each time it rains, which keeps it pale. You pay nothing for the nave, but the dome costs extra and means climbing about 300 steps.

An old orange greenhouse closing off the Tuileries, where Monet's Water Lilies wrap the walls of two oval rooms. Monet himself fixed the hang so the canvases would be seen under natural light falling from the ceiling. It shuts on Tuesdays.

Hotel Biron, Rodin's studio late in life, became the museum, and The Thinker sits out in the rose garden. A cheaper garden-only ticket exists if the sculpture outdoors is all you want. It closes on Mondays.

Louis XIV built it as a hospital for wounded soldiers, and Napoleon's red stone sarcophagus rests under its gilded dome. One ticket also opens the Army Museum's halls of armour and cannon. The tomb sits low, so you look down at it over a round balustrade.

Built as a church, then made a burial place for the great, so Voltaire, Hugo and the Curies lie in its crypt. Foucault's pendulum, which showed the Earth turning, swings beneath the dome. The colonnade outside the dome opens only in the milder months.

The garden in front of the Luxembourg Palace, where the Senate sits, with green metal chairs you drag wherever you like. Children rent wooden sailboats on the big pond and push them along with sticks. The Medici Fountain hides in the shade toward the trees.

Late in the 1700s, bones from overflowing cemeteries went into old quarry tunnels, stacked into walls. A tight spiral stair drops to a 1.5 kilometre walk that comes out elsewhere. Tickets are timed and bought ahead, and it stays cool below.

Finished in 1612 as the oldest planned square in Paris, ringed by thirty-six red brick houses over arcades. One corner was Victor Hugo's home, and its permanent display is free. Galleries and cafes run along under the arches.

The canal linking the Seine to La Villette, lined with arched iron footbridges and locks. Whenever a barge arrives, onlookers gather on the bridges as the lock fills. By evening the banks are crowded with people sitting on the edge with a beer.

A medieval royal palace on the Ile de la Cite, turned prison in the Revolution, where Marie Antoinette was held until her execution. Its Gothic hall, a forest of pillars, survives as built. A combined ticket with Sainte-Chapelle opens the two buildings.

The department store on Boulevard Haussmann, its central hall roofed by a stained glass dome from 1912. The rooftop terrace charges nothing and takes in the opera house roof and the Eiffel Tower. At Christmas a giant tree is hung beneath the dome.

Boats leave from the Alma bridge and the Eiffel Tower piers, circle the island of Notre-Dame and return to the pier roughly an hour later. Board around sunset and the tower lights come on during the return. Queue early to get a seat on the open top deck.

A Left Bank quarter around Saint-Germain-des-Pres church, among the oldest churches in Paris. The two cafes where Sartre and Beauvoir wrote still sit side by side across from it. Galleries and bookshops fill the side streets.

Glass-roofed shopping lanes dating from the early 1800s, built so shoppers could browse dry. Galerie Vivienne is known for its mosaic floor, Passage des Panoramas for its stamp and old postcard dealers. Iron gates close them at night.

Tadao Ando turned this round old grain exchange into a gallery of recent art, opened in 2021. Under the glass dome he planted a concrete drum, and walking its upper rim puts the painted frieze within reach. Les Halles metro station is close by.

Just past the northern edge of Paris, over a thousand antique dealers gather in a dozen or so separate markets. It runs Saturday to Monday, and each lane sorts itself by era, from furniture down to old buttons. The street stalls by the metro draw pickpockets.

King after king remodelled it, so each room belongs to another age; after abdicating, Napoleon said goodbye to his guard on its horseshoe stair. Trains from Gare de Lyon take about 40 minutes, then a bus. Climbers know its forest for bouldering.