Cemetery in Paris
FreeCosts nothing to visit.
Pere Lachaise Cemetery at dawn is a completely different experience from the daytime crowds around Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Admission is free at any hour, so the early visit costs nothing extra: the trick is simply arriving when the gates open. The early morning light through the trees, the fog in winter, and the empty paths make it one of the most atmospheric free experiences in Paris. Opening time moves with the season, a little earlier in summer and later in winter, so the quiet window shifts through the year. Budget travelers arrive at opening, pick up a free paper map at the entrance, and walk the silent avenues with the tombs to themselves. Chopin, Proust, Edith Piaf, Moliere, and Balzac are all here, and in the early morning, they are all yours.
For the full picture of the site, its history, and the rest of the famous graves, see the canonical Pere Lachaise Cemetery. A dawn walk here also slots neatly into a free-and-outdoors Paris morning: climb to Sacre-Coeur for the best free view in the city afterwards, drift through Ile de la Cite and Ile Saint-Louis, or stretch the walk out to Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, all of which cost 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.
Working out what Paris costs?
The whole of Paris