Garden in Paris
Also known as Jardin du Luxembourg
FreeCosts nothing to visit.
The Luxembourg Gardens are the most beloved park in Paris, a formal French garden surrounding the Luxembourg Palace in the 6th arrondissement. Free. Marie de Medici commissioned the garden in the 1610s, modelling it on the Boboli Gardens of her native Florence, and the Florentine touch still shows in the Medici Fountain tucked into a shaded corner. That fountain, the octagonal pond where children sail rented model boats, and the green metal chairs scattered across the gravel are the whole experience.
Budget travelers bring a book, drag a chair into the sun, and stay for hours. Nobody moves you on. The orchards, the beekeeping school, and the marionette theatre cost nothing to wander past, and entry to the gardens themselves never costs a cent. It sits a short walk from the Latin Quarter and Notre-Dame Cathedral, so it pairs easily with a free walking day through central Paris. If a chair is taken, the Tuileries Garden and the Palais Royal Garden are the other two free green rooms worth knowing, with the larger Jardin des Plantes a little further south for anyone wanting more space. The most Parisian thing you can do, and it costs nothing.
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Other places worth the walk, and what each one costs.
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.
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The whole of Paris