Museum in Paris
Also known as Orsay Museum
Partly free, partly paidSome of it costs nothing, some of it charges.
The Musee d’Orsay is housed in a former railway station on the Left Bank, holding the world’s largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Entry is paid, but it is free on the first Sunday of each month and free for visitors under 18 at any time, so timing the visit is the main budget lever. Monet, Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh, Manet, and Cezanne are all here. The building itself, with its iron and glass vaults and the giant clock face overlooking the Seine, is worth seeing even from outside, and the glass-backed clock on the upper floor is one of the best free photo spots in the city once you are inside.
Budget travelers usually pick a side. The Louvre Museum and the Orsay sit across the Seine from each other, and trying to do both properly in one day burns money and energy, so choose based on whether old masters or the Impressionists pull harder. The nearby Musee de l’Orangerie in the Tuileries, home to Monet’s Water Lilies, pairs better with the Orsay than the Louvre does and runs a combined ticket for the two. The Seine Riverbanks right outside cost nothing and connect the Orsay on foot to the Louvre Museum, the Eiffel Tower, and Notre-Dame Cathedral. The cheapest way to see the Orsay well is the free first Sunday, arriving early before the queue builds.
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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