Museum in Paris
Paid entryThere is an entry charge.
The Palais de Tokyo is the largest contemporary art center in Europe by exhibition space, and it is also the rawest. It sits in the 16th arrondissement, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, in the west wing of a building put up for the 1937 International Exposition. The look is deliberate: bare concrete, exposed beams, industrial space left rough on purpose so the rotating contemporary shows have room to be loud. Entry to the exhibitions is paid, so the budget question is whether the show on at the time is worth the ticket that day.
What does not cost anything is the building and its setting. The forecourt and the wide terrace are free to walk, and the terrace looks straight across the river at the Eiffel Tower. It is a calmer, less crowded place to take that photo than the Trocadero a few minutes up the bank. The bookshop and entrance hall can be wandered without a ticket, and the raw concrete architecture is a real part of the visit on its own. For anyone who does go in, the cost depends a lot on who is buying: French institutions run steep student and youth reductions, and visitors under 18 generally enter free.
Two things make it worth keeping on the list. First, it is one of the latest-closing museums in Paris, open well into the night, so it works as the evening half of a day that spent its daylight on free sights. Second, it sits inside an easy free walking route. The Eiffel Tower and its free Champ de Mars lawns are a short stroll along the Seine, and central Paris is one short metro hop away. Budget travelers who want contemporary and modern art can pair one paid visit here with the Pompidou Centre, which is free on the first Sunday of the month, and treat the Musee d’Orsay as the third stop on a Paris art run.
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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