Street in Paris
Also known as Avenue des Champs-Élysées
FreeCosts nothing to visit.
The Avenue des Champs-Elysees runs from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, the most famous boulevard in the world. Free to walk. It sits on the great straight line that continues east through the Tuileries Garden and the Louvre Museum, so a single walk down the avenue links several of the headline sights of Paris without a ticket. The avenue is wide, tree-lined, and commercially overwhelming: flagship stores, cinemas, and cafes at tourist prices. Budget travelers walk the full 1.9 kilometers from the Tuileries to the Arc and experience the scale of Parisian ambition, then eat on a side street where prices are roughly half of what they are on the avenue itself. The lower half toward Concorde is parkland rather than shops and stays quiet and free, a calmer way to take in the boulevard.
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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 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.
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