Square in Paris
Also known as Place Royale
FreeCosts nothing to visit.
Place des Vosges is the oldest planned square in Paris, a perfect symmetry of red brick and cream stone facades built under Henri IV and completed in 1612. Free. Thirty-six matching houses, all the same height, sit above continuous arcades that run around all four sides, so you can walk the whole square under cover when it rains. In the middle is a formal public garden with fountains, clipped trees, and benches, and it costs nothing to sit in.
The square is the centrepiece of Le Marais, the historic quarter that Haussmann’s demolitions largely skipped, so it is an easy free anchor for a budget walk. On one corner stands the Maison de Victor Hugo, in the apartment where the writer lived for sixteen years, and its permanent collection is free to enter. A few streets away, the Musee Carnavalet, the museum of the history of Paris, is also free to enter, which makes this small patch of Paris one of the best-value corners in the city: a free square, a free writer’s house, and a free museum within a short walk of each other.
Budget travelers come here to do what locals do. Buy a baguette or a falafel from the nearby rue des Rosiers, carry it into the garden, and eat it on a bench under the lime trees. The square was originally called Place Royale and only took the name Place des Vosges in 1800, when the Vosges department became the first to pay its revolutionary taxes. Knowing that costs nothing either, and it is the kind of detail that turns a quick photo stop into a proper visit.
Practical
Nearby
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