City in France
37 things to see22 of them free
Paris is famous for being expensive, but it is one of the easiest cities in Europe to enjoy on almost no budget. The best of Paris is free and outdoors: walk the Seine, climb the steps of Sacre-Coeur for the finest free view in the city, cross over to Ile de la Cite and Ile Saint-Louis, and spend a quiet morning in Pere Lachaise Cemetery, an open-air museum of carved tombs and famous graves. Most churches are free to enter and the city parks cost nothing, and several of the national museums, including the Musee d’Orsay and the Pompidou, give free entry to their permanent collections on the first Sunday of the month.
The other half of cheap Paris is food. Skip the sit-down restaurants and eat like a local: a baguette from a neighbourhood bakery, cheese and fruit from a market like Marche d’Aligre or the stalls along Rue Mouffetard, and a picnic on the riverbank or in a park such as Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Stroll the Champs-Elysees and the Pont Alexandre III for free, and the Tuileries gardens beside the Musee de l’Orangerie are open public space that costs nothing to walk through.
Paris is also a strong budget base for day trips. The TGV and regional trains put cathedral cities like Reims and Rouen and the markets of Lille within an easy, affordable ride, so you can see more of France without paying for a second hotel. Spring and early autumn are the cheapest sensible times to visit, with milder crowds and lower room rates than the summer peak.
What to see
22 of these cost nothing at all.
The Arc de Triomphe is Napoleon's triumphal arch at the western end of the Champs-Elysees, the largest triumphal arch in the world at nearly 50 meters tall. Napoleon commissioned it in 1806 to honor the Grande Armee, and it was finished in 1836, long after his fall.
Canal Saint-Martin is a tree-lined waterway in the 10th arrondissement, threaded with arched iron footbridges and a chain of locks that still raise and lower passing boats. Napoleon ordered it dug to bring clean water into the city, and it opened in 1825.
The Avenue des Champs-Elysees runs from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, the most famous boulevard in the world. It forms the central stretch of the historic axis that lines up with the Tuileries Garden and the Louvre Museum to the east. Free to walk.
The Eiffel Tower is the most recognized structure in the world, built for the 1889 World's Fair by Gustave Eiffel's engineering company and never taken down. It was meant to be temporary, a 20-year exhibit, but its usefulness as a radio and telegraph mast saved it and it has stood in the 7th arrondissement ever since.
The Grand Canal is a cruciform artificial lake at the western end of the Palace of Versailles Gardens, roughly 1.6 kilometers along its long arm. Andre Le Notre designed it as the vanishing point of the garden's central axis and as a mirror for the sky, so the whole layout pulls the eye toward the water.
Ile de la Cite is the island in the Seine where Paris began, the spot where the Gallic Parisii and then Roman Lutetia first took root before the city spread to both banks. It is the historic heart of Paris, and almost everything on it can be seen for free.
Ile Saint-Louis is the smaller of the two natural islands in the Seine, a quiet residential island of 17th-century townhouses, one main street with ice cream shops (Berthillon is the most famous), and views of Notre-Dame from its western tip. Free to walk.
The Jardin des Plantes is Paris's botanical garden and natural history museum campus in the 5th arrondissement. The outdoor gardens and the alpine garden are free to enter, while the menagerie (one of the oldest zoos in the world), the Grande Galerie de l'Evolution, and the greenhouses charge admission.
Le Marais is the historic district on the Right Bank, a dense grid of narrow streets, aristocratic mansions now turned into museums, Jewish delis, LGBTQ+ bars, and fashion boutiques. It is one of the few quarters Baron Haussmann never flattened, so the medieval street plan and the pre-Revolution hotels particuliers survive intact.
The Louvre is the most visited museum in the world, set in a former royal palace on the Right Bank of the Seine with a glass pyramid marking its courtyard entrance.
The Luxembourg Gardens are the most beloved park in Paris, a formal French garden wrapped around the Luxembourg Palace in the 6th arrondissement. Free to enter.
The Marche d'Aligre is a covered and open-air market in the 12th arrondissement, one of the oldest and cheapest food markets in Paris. It runs as three things at once: open-air produce stalls along the Place d'Aligre, the covered Marche Beauvau hall for meat, fish, and cheese, and a small second-hand brocante market on the square.
Marie Antoinette's Estate (Domaine de Marie-Antoinette) is the queen's private retreat at the northern end of the Palace of Versailles Gardens, a walled world she built to escape the etiquette of the main palace.
Montmartre is the hilltop quarter in the 18th arrondissement, the highest point in Paris, where Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, and the Impressionists once worked. The streets, squares, viewpoints, and the climb itself are free to wander.
The Cimetiere du Montparnasse is the third great Parisian cemetery, after Pere Lachaise Cemetery and Montmartre, and it is free to enter. Sartre and Beauvoir share a single grave here, and Baudelaire, Beckett, Ionesco, Man Ray, and Julio Cortazar are all buried within the walls.
The Moulin Rouge is the world's most famous cabaret, a red windmill on the Boulevard de Clichy in Pigalle at the foot of Montmartre. Opened in 1889, it gave the modern French cancan its stage and its reputation. The exterior is free to photograph from outside; only the show carries a ticket.
The Musee Carnavalet is the museum of the history of Paris, housed in two Renaissance mansions in the Marais. The permanent collection is free to enter.
The Musee de l'Orangerie sits at the western corner of the Tuileries Garden and houses Monet's Water Lilies: eight enormous panels mounted in two oval rooms the artist designed for them himself.
The Musee d'Orsay holds the world's largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, set inside a former Beaux-Arts railway station on the Left Bank of the Seine.
Notre-Dame is the Gothic cathedral on Ile de la Cite, the island in the Seine where Paris began. It is one of the most important works of medieval architecture in Europe and one of the city's great free sights: entry to the cathedral interior is free.
The Palais de Tokyo is the largest contemporary art center in Europe by exhibition space, and it is the one major Paris art venue built to feel unfinished. It fills the west wing of a building raised for the 1937 International Exposition, in the 16th arrondissement just across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
The Palais Royal Garden is a hidden formal garden enclosed by colonnaded arcades, a short walk from the Louvre Museum in central Paris. It is free to enter, which makes it one of the best-value calm spots in a part of the city where almost everything else costs money.
Parc des Buttes-Chaumont is one of Paris's largest parks, a dramatic engineered landscape in the 19th arrondissement with a lake, a waterfall in an artificial grotto, a suspension bridge, and a rocky island crowned by a small classical temple.
Pere Lachaise is the largest cemetery in Paris and one of the most visited in the world, and it is free to enter. Opened in 1804 on a hillside in the 20th arrondissement, its tree-lined avenues and carved tombs form an open-air museum of sculpture and history. Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Chopin, Edith Piaf, Moliere, and Proust are all buried here.
Pere Lachaise Cemetery at dawn is a completely different place from the crowded site that fills up by mid-morning around the graves of Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde.
The Petit Palais is the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts, housed in a Beaux-Arts building near the Champs-Elysees with a semicircular colonnade and a garden courtyard. Charles Girault designed it for the 1900 World's Fair, and it has held the city's fine arts collection ever since.
Place des Vosges is the oldest planned square in Paris, a perfect symmetry of red brick and cream stone facades built under Henri IV and completed in 1612. Thirty-six matching houses sit above continuous ground-floor arcades, framing a formal garden with fountains and clipped lime trees.
Place Saint-Michel is a square on the Left Bank at the foot of the Pont Saint-Michel, directly opposite Ile de la Cite and dominated by the monumental Fontaine Saint-Michel, which depicts the archangel Michael slaying the dragon. The square is free.
The Centre Pompidou is Paris's museum of modern and contemporary art, built in the Beaubourg quarter on the Right Bank and famous for turning a building inside out.
The Pont Alexandre III is the most ornate bridge in Paris, spanning the Seine between the Invalides on the left bank and the Grand Palais and Petit Palais on the right.
Rue Mouffetard is a market street in the Latin Quarter of Paris, one of the oldest streets in the city, climbing the hill of Sainte-Genevieve in the 5th arrondissement up toward the Pantheon quarter and the Place de la Contrescarpe. The street itself costs nothing to walk, and for budget travelers that is the whole point.
Sacre-Coeur is the white-domed basilica on the summit of Montmartre, the highest point in Paris and visible from across the city. Entry to the church is free. The basilica caps a hill of free things to do, and the dome climb is the one paid add-on for travelers who want to go higher still.
The steps leading up to Sacre-Coeur are one of the great free gathering spots in Paris, a wide tiered staircase climbing the butte of Montmartre where musicians play, artists sketch, and crowds sit watching the city spread out below. Free.
Sainte-Chapelle is a 13th-century Gothic chapel on the Ile de la Cite, built by Louis IX to house the Crown of Thorns and consecrated in 1248.
The banks of the Seine through central Paris are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a continuous run of stone quays, bouquiniste bookstalls, and pedestrian paths stretching past most of the city's headline sights.
The Tuileries Garden is the formal French garden stretching from the Louvre Museum to the Place de la Concorde, a straight axis of gravel paths, symmetrical lawns, fountains, and free green chairs. Free to enter.
The gardens of the Palace of Versailles are free to enter on most days, with a fee applying only on fountain-show days, when the Grandes Eaux musical fountains are switched on, typically summer weekends. That single fact makes the gardens one of the best no-cost day trips reachable from Paris.
On foot
Tip-based tours and self-guided routes, which is usually the cheapest orientation there is.
The SANDEMANs Free Tour of Paris starts at Place Saint-Michel and walks along the Seine covering Notre-Dame, the Louvre exterior, and Sainte-Chapelle. It is the most established free walking tour option in Paris.
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