The world's great museum city, and a city of hidden rooms: painted ceilings, curiosity shops and courtyards you only find by pushing a door.
A royal palace holding art from antiquity to 1848. Choose one wing and do it properly rather than chasing the Mona Lisa.
A Beaux-Arts railway station built for the 1900 World's Fair, now home to the great Impressionist collection.
Monet's Water Lilies, installed in two oval rooms lit from above, exactly as he wanted. Small, calm, unforgettable.
The largest public Picasso collection, in the Hôtel Salé, a 17th-century mansion whose grand staircase is worth the visit alone.
Rodin's sculptures in the Hôtel Biron, with The Thinker and The Gates of Hell in the rose garden.
François Pinault's contemporary collection, inside a 19th-century rotunda where Tadao Ando slipped a concrete cylinder under the glass dome.
Frank Gehry's glass sails at the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, home to some of the biggest exhibitions in Paris.
The densest gallery district in Paris: Perrotin, Thaddaeus Ropac, Chantal Crousel, Marian Goodman and many younger spaces within a few streets.
Closed for renovation until 2030. Its collection is shown in partner venues in Paris and around France in the meantime.
Ceilings, fountains, curiosity shops: the city's other museum.
A Belle Époque station restaurant opened in 1901 for the World's Fair: 41 paintings on the walls and ceilings, showing the landscapes the PLM trains travelled through. A listed historic monument since 1972.
A natural-history shop since 1831: butterflies, shells, minerals and taxidermy animals in a building from the 1690s. Half shop, half cabinet of curiosities.
Green cast-iron drinking fountains given to the city by the philanthropist Richard Wallace from 1872, held up by four caryatids. Paris's most elegant public furniture, and they still work.
A museum of hunting and nature in two Marais mansions, one by François Mansart, where antlers, stuffed animals and contemporary art share wood-panelled rooms. Strange in the best way.
Built in 1926, with a tiled patio and gardens. Its tea room serves mint tea and pastries under the fig trees.
Opened in 1799, one of the oldest covered passages in Paris: glass roof, old shopfronts, stamp dealers and tiny restaurants.
Antique carousels, fairground games and Venetian salons in old wine warehouses at Bercy. Visits by appointment, and you can ride some of the carousels.
The painter Ary Scheffer's house, where George Sand and Chopin came to his Friday salons. Free permanent collection, and a tea room in the garden.
Hermès opened this shop in 2010 in the 1930s swimming pool of the Hôtel Lutetia. The pool's mosaic floor and Art Deco balconies are still there, under three huts of woven ash wood.
Oscar Niemeyer designed the French Communist Party's headquarters while in exile from Brazil. It has a curved glass wall and a white dome, half buried in the forecourt, over a council chamber whose ceiling is covered in aluminium blades.
The Symbolist painter turned his house into his own museum before he died. Its two-storey studio is hung frame to frame and linked by a spiral iron staircase.
Ricardo Bofill's 1982 social housing: a Palace, a Theatre and an Arch in prefabricated concrete, built like a Baroque stage set. It has appeared in Brazil and The Hunger Games.
Musée d'Orsay · until 31 Jan 2027
Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris · until 24 Jan 2027
See the full selection →Monet's house and garden, about an hour away by train and bus (April–October).
Van Gogh's last village, his grave, and the Château d'Auvers, about an hour away.
Three and a half hours by train: see the Arles city guide.
The List · November 2026
Curator's Highlight · September 2026
Morning at the Orangerie → cross the Tuileries to the Musée d'Orsay → lunch on the Left Bank → Deyrolle on the rue du Bac → walk to the Marais galleries → the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature → an aperitif under the ceilings of Le Train Bleu.