Paris Travel Guides: Itineraries, Day Trips & Things to Do (2026)

Everything we've published on visiting Paris, in one place: 19 trip-planning guides covering itineraries and trip length, where to stay, when to visit, day trips, restaurants and shopping, hidden gems, the best viewpoints and museums, family and rainy-day options, and honest advice on city passes. Each guide is written for a specific decision you make while planning a trip to Paris, France.

Looking for individual landmark tickets, opening hours and worth-it advice? See our Paris attractions hub, with 14 dedicated visitor guides.

How many days do you need in Paris?

Three days covers the essential landmarks at a brisk pace, while four is the trip length that lets you group sights by arrondissement instead of crisscrossing the city — that's the core finding of our Paris trip-length guide, which compares 2, 3, 4 and 7+ day trips and spells out what you have to cut at each length. If you're on a tight stopover, the one-day itinerary sequences the icons hour by hour with 2026 ticket prices and opening hours baked in; a weekend visitor gets a day-by-day route in the 2-day plan; and the 3-day itinerary adds the neighborhood time — Montmartre, the Marais, the Left Bank — that shorter trips have to sacrifice. Add a day on top for Versailles, kids in tow, or a serious interest in shopping, and the count climbs again. Whatever length you settle on, book the timed-entry sights first and fit the free neighborhoods around them — doing it in the reverse order is how visitors end up crisscrossing the city and losing half-days to transit.

When should you go?

Late May through June and September deliver the clearest trade-off: warm days, long daylight, and crowds that have not yet peaked around the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. Budget-focused travelers do better in the window between mid-November and mid-December, when hotel rates drop and the Christmas rush has not started — our guide to the best time to visit Paris works through weather, daylight hours and the August closures worth planning around, month by month. And a wet forecast isn't a lost day: the rainy-day guide leans on the city's covered passages, big museums and cozy cafes to keep an itinerary on track. Quieter seasons also suit the city's less-trafficked corners — the quiet gardens, cheap opera seats and local ice cream stops in our guide to hidden gems in Paris reward exactly the kind of unhurried visit that peak-summer crowds make difficult.

Where to stay

Paris spirals through 20 arrondissements, each with a different pace, price and Métro logic, and where you sleep quietly decides how much of your trip you spend underground in transit. Our guide to where to stay in Paris ranks nine neighborhoods by budget, safety and vibe, matched to traveler type — first-timers, couples, families and repeat visitors all land in different quarters. Traveling with children changes the calculus again: Paris with kids covers family stays, playground-adjacent bases and the timing tricks that make museum days work with younger travelers. If your dates are flexible, cross-reference the neighborhood you pick against seasonal pricing — the same room can swing sharply between June's peak and the quieter late-November window.

Budget, passes and free sights

The 2026 Paris Pass runs from €99 for one day to €299 for six days with museum access built in, and our Paris Pass review lands on a clear rule: it only pays off if you pack several paid museums and monuments into one trip, so one-day visitors should buy single tickets instead. A surprising share of the city costs nothing at all — Sacré-Cœur is free to enter and open every day of the year from 6:30am to 10:30pm, with the dome climb the only paid extra at €8 — and our roundup of free things to do in Paris adds Montmartre viewpoints, canal walks and free-entry museums to build out a zero-spend day.

The landmarks worth booking ahead

Six Paris sights are where 2026 booking mechanics genuinely matter. Top-level elevator tickets at the Eiffel Tower cost €36.70 for adults, and a proper visit runs 2 to 3 hours door to door once you count security and two elevator changes. The Louvre charges €22 for European Economic Area residents and €32 for everyone else, opens 9am to 6pm most days with late Wednesday and Friday openings — and is closed every Tuesday, the single most common scheduling mistake. Since March 2026, the Musée d'Orsay (€16 online) requires every visitor to book a timed-entry slot, because walk-up admission is suspended during renovation works. Sainte-Chapelle has no free option: every visitor buys a €16–€22 ticket with a 30-minute entry slot. The Paris Catacombs cost €31 at the full rate with audio guide included, and the circuit caps at 200 visitors underground at a time, so an unbooked summer afternoon can mean an hour-plus queue at street level. And the Palace of Versailles Passport ticket costs €35 in 2026 high season — plan a full day, roughly 6 to 8 hours door to door from central Paris. For everything beyond these six, our ranking of the best museums in Paris confirms current prices and hours across the city.

Food, shopping, day trips and after dark

Paris planning doesn't stop at monuments. Our pick of the best restaurants in Paris spans Michelin-starred tasting menus, neo-bistros and Marais neighborhood classics, with the booking and tipping etiquette that makes reservations painless, while the shopping guide maps the grands magasins, Le Marais and Saint-Germain — plus the détaxe paperwork that gets non-EU visitors money back. Out of town, the RER C reaches Versailles in about 40 minutes, and our comparison of day trips from Paris weighs it against Giverny and Mont Saint-Michel with train times and costs. When the sun drops, the guide to things to do in Paris at night covers the Eiffel Tower light shows and Seine cruises, and our map of where to watch the sunset compares Trocadéro, Montmartre and the quieter alternatives ranked in the best viewpoints in Paris — plus a practical plan for getting home once the Métro slows down late in the evening.