Five days that treat Paris as a city to live in temporarily rather than a monument circuit to complete. The Louvre and the Eiffel Tower are here — they remain unreplaceable — but the architecture of this itinerary is built around the things that make you consider moving here: the Sunday morning Marché d'Aligre, the Canal Saint-Martin in the afternoon, a properly executed lunch at a counter in the 10th arrondissement, and Versailles in either direction you choose to walk through its gardens. This is the itinerary that makes you want to come back for a month.
The Louvre is the largest art museum in the world and contains some of the most significant objects on earth. Don't try to see all of it — 35,000 works are on display and a proper walk through everything takes days. The Denon wing (Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory) is the non-negotiable 2-hour circuit. Then the Tuileries Garden, the Palais-Royal, and eastward through the Marais to the Place des Vosges.
Buy a timed-entry ticket at louvre.fr; the walk-up queue can be over 2 hours in peak season. Arrive at the Pyramid entrance at opening (9am). Priority: Winged Victory of Samothrace (the staircase approach is one of the great museum experiences), Venus de Milo (Room 16, Greek antiquities), and the Mona Lisa (Room 711, Salle des États, Denon Wing — smaller than you expect, behind glass, crowded). The Vermeer and Dutch Flemish paintings on the second floor are excellent and usually uncrowded. Budget 2–3 hours for a focused visit; more if time allows.
The wine bar version of Gregory Marchand's Frenchie — no reservations, first come first served at a zinc bar, rotating small plates, natural wine list. On Rue du Nil in the 2nd, a 10-minute walk from the Louvre. Budget €25–35. If the queue is too long, the covered passage Galerie Vivienne (1826, beautifully preserved) 3 minutes away has two or three solid bistro options and makes a good rain shelter.
The Marais is Paris's best-preserved medieval neighborhood — the aristocratic quarter before the Revolution, now home to the MHIT (Holocaust memorial, free), the Picasso Museum (€14), and the Place des Vosges (the oldest planned square in Paris, free). Walk the streets around Rue de Bretagne and Rue des Archives for the best concentration of independent bookshops, galleries, and the city's best falafel (L'As du Fallafel on Rue des Rosiers, €8, queue outside). The Carnavalet Museum (history of Paris, free) is on Rue de Sévigné.
The restaurants under the arcades of Place des Vosges are a mixed bag (mostly tourist-adjacent). Instead, walk one block to Rue de Bretagne or Rue Charlot — the Marais dining streets that still function for the neighborhood. Le Hangar on Impasse Berthaud is a classic: cash only, excellent steak frites, checked tablecloths, no English menu. Budget €35–45 per person with wine.
The Left Bank itinerary that justifies every Paris cliché: the Eiffel Tower before the crowds, Musée d'Orsay for the Impressionists, Musée de l'Orangerie for Monet's Water Lilies, and Saint-Germain for the cafés and the bookshops. Start early; the Eiffel Tower queue at 9am is different from the Eiffel Tower queue at noon.
Go at 9am when the Champ de Mars is quiet and the light is right for photography. Buy tickets online at ticket.toureiffel.paris — the lift to the summit is €29.40, the stairs to Level 2 is €10.70 (significantly shorter queue, good value). The view from Level 2 is actually better for photographs than the summit, which is often hazy. The tower is 330 meters high and weighs 7,300 tonnes. It was supposed to be demolished in 1909 after the 1889 World's Fair; instead it became a radio transmission tower and the city kept it.
The famous Saint-Germain cafés — Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Hemingway — are expensive (€6 coffee, €22 croque-monsieur) and worth doing once. Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots face each other on Boulevard Saint-Germain 100m apart; both trade on the same literary history. The terrace in good weather, a café crème, and the people-watching are the product. Budget €15–20 per person for coffee and a light lunch.
The Orangerie sits at the western end of the Tuileries and houses Monet's Nymphéas — the eight monumental Water Lilies panels installed in two oval rooms that the artist designed himself and donated to France in 1918. The effect is total: you walk into a room of curved walls covered floor to ceiling in Impressionist painting and the outside world disappears. €12.50 adult; free first Sunday of month. Budget 45 minutes. The collection beneath also includes Cézanne, Renoir, Picasso, and Matisse.
The Bistrot Paul Bert in the 11th arrondissement is the benchmark Paris bistro: the €44 menu includes an amuse-bouche, starter, main, and dessert. The rib steak for two is carved tableside. The wine list is serious. It is the kind of restaurant that other Paris restaurants point to when someone asks what a real bistro looks like. Book 2 weeks ahead.
Versailles is 40 minutes from central Paris by RER C and is the most complete surviving example of an absolute monarch's attempt to make power visible and permanent. The château is overwhelming in scale; the gardens are 800 hectares. Book timed entry for the château (€20 at chateauversailles.fr); arrive at the RER station by 9am. Spend 90 minutes in the State Apartments (Hall of Mirrors, King's and Queen's chambers), then escape to the gardens and the Grand and Petit Trianon — the latter is where Marie Antoinette actually lived and is far more human in scale.
The scale announces itself before you enter: the forecourt, the gilded gates, the facade of 700 windows and 2 km of built frontage. Inside: the Hall of Mirrors (73 meters long, 357 mirrors, the treaty that ended WWI was signed here), the King's apartments, the Queen's apartments. Tour groups concentrate in the Hall of Mirrors; arriving at opening reduces this significantly. The audio guide is included with most tickets and covers the major rooms well. Budget 90 minutes for the main château.
The 800-hectare gardens are free on many days (€10 in high season when the fountains run). Walk the Grand Canal axis (1.6 km long) or rent a bike or golf cart at the orangery. The Grand Trianon (a 17th-century pink marble mini-palace Louis XIV had built for peace and quiet) and Petit Trianon (Marie Antoinette's retreat) are 30 minutes' walk from the main château and worth it — both are included in the Passport ticket (€28) or €12 extra separately. The Queen's Hamlet (Hameau de la Reine) at the Petit Trianon is Marie Antoinette's fantasy village where she played at being a shepherdess.
The most Parisian day of the trip: a morning on the Canal Saint-Martin (the neighborhood that gentrified slowly and well), the Marché d'Aligre in the 12th (the best-value food market in Paris), and the Centre Pompidou for the permanent collection and the view. This is what the city looks like to people who live here.
The Canal Saint-Martin runs 4.5 km from the Seine at Bastille north through the 10th and 19th arrondissements. The most atmospheric section is around Quai de Jemmapes and Quai de Valmy — iron footbridges, plane-tree shade, the sound of locks opening and closing. The Hôtel du Nord (the film, Atmosphère, atmosphère) is still there. Walk north from Bastille Métro or start at République and walk south. Coffee at Ten Belles on Quai de Jemmapes (excellent espresso, outdoor tables).
The inside-out building that scandalized Paris in 1977 and is now beloved — all the structural and mechanical systems (pipes, escalators, ducts) are on the outside, color-coded by function (red for traffic, green for water, blue for air, yellow for electricity). The permanent collection (Levels 4–5) is the best survey of 20th-century art in France: Duchamp's readymades, Matisse's cut-outs, Kandinsky, Brancusi, Bourgeois. €15 permanent collection; free first Sunday of month. The rooftop (via the escalators up the exterior of the building) gives the best view of central Paris at rooftop level without climbing anything.
Septime (11th, restaurant of the year territory, tasting menu €80+) is the best restaurant in Paris for what it costs if you can book (2 months ahead online, 9am Paris time when reservations open — set an alarm). If Septime isn't bookable, Saturne (2nd, €55 tasting menu) or Clown Bar (11th, wine-bar classics, no reservations, arrive at 7pm) are both excellent. This is the dinner budget for a special night.
A last morning on the hill. Montmartre before 10am is one of the best things Paris has to offer — the neighborhood waking up, the Sacré-Cœur in the morning light, and the possibility of breakfast at a café on Rue des Abbesses before the tourists arrive in force.
The café from the film Amélie, now a tourist destination, but still a functioning neighborhood café with good coffee and a serviceable petit-déjeuner. On Rue Lepic. Have a café crème and a croissant beurre. The film tourism is manageable before 10am.
Take the Métro to Abbesses (Line 12, one of the deepest stations in Paris; the Art Nouveau Guimard entrance is original). Walk up Rue Lepic toward the summit — Moulin de la Galette is here, the windmill used by Renoir as the setting for Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876). Sacré-Cœur opens early. The view from the steps is better in the morning when it's less crowded. Rue Lepic market vendors start setting up by 8am.
RER B from any central station to CDG (35 min, €11.80) or Orlyval/tram to ORY from Denfert-Rochereau (~35 min, €14.50). Allow 2.5–3 hours from central Paris to gate for international flights. CDG T2 has the best connections; ORY operates from two terminals (South and West) on different bus routes.
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