Museum in Paris
Also known as Musee des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris
FreeCosts nothing to visit.
The Petit Palais is the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts, and walking in costs nothing. The architect Charles Girault built it for the 1900 World’s Fair, the same expo that left the gilded Pont Alexandre III one street over, and the building alone is reason to step inside: a semicircular colonnade out front, a sweeping staircase, and a garden courtyard that most people on the Champs-Elysees walk straight past.
The free permanent collection ranges wide. Nineteenth-century French painting, Dutch and Flemish masters, ancient Greek and Roman pieces, and decorative arts all sit under one roof, so it covers a lot of the ground travelers normally pay to see elsewhere in the city. Temporary exhibitions are ticketed, but the standing collection stays free, and that is the part worth planning around.
The inner garden cafe is one of the prettiest quiet corners in this stretch of Paris. The move for budget travelers is simple: come for free, see world-class art, then sit in the courtyard. The Grand Palais directly across the avenue draws the crowds and the entry fees, while the Petit Palais hands you most of the payoff for 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