Things to Do in Paris: Itineraries, Costs and Food

Don't try to see the whole museum. Pick one wing (Denon for the Mona Lisa and Italian painting, Richelieu for decorative arts and French painting) and treat a second visit as the plan, not a failure.

The upper chapel is the whole reason to come, floor-to-ceiling 13th-century stained glass with almost no wall left between the windows. Go on a sunny morning if you can pick the date.

This is not the pre-fire Notre-Dame experience. Access, queueing and any tower/crypt visits changed after the restoration; check the cathedral's own site for current rules rather than an old guidebook, official pages blocked automated verification during this research.

Not covered by the Paris Museum Pass. The view from the top is genuinely better from Montparnasse Tower or the Trocadéro gardens if you'd rather skip the queue and the crowd on the tower itself.

A 40-minute RER C ride from central Paris. Skip the palace-only ticket if you have a full day; the gardens and Marie-Antoinette's estate are worth more time than the state apartments.

A former train station holding the best Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection in the city. Smaller and faster to see well than the Louvre, a good counter-programming day.

Three free public swimming spots on the Seine (Bras Marie, Bras de Grenelle, Bercy) opened after a 1.4 billion euro cleanup, running summer months with lifeguards, changing rooms and water quality checks. Genuinely novel and free, but sessions are weather and water-quality dependent and get cut with little notice. Go, but have a backup plan for the day.

A converted 19th-century foundry in the 11th arrondissement that projects large-scale digital art shows across floor-to-ceiling walls, with the specific exhibition rotating every few months. The format works and the space is genuinely impressive. Check what's actually showing before booking, since exhibits rotate and a previously marketed show may already have closed.

Annual July-August event that turns stretches of the Seine riverbank and the Bassin de la Villette into temporary beaches with deckchairs, water activities and free events. Free and pleasant for an afternoon, but it is deckchairs on a riverbank, not an actual beach. Manage expectations.

Dense historic district on the Right Bank mixing narrow medieval streets, independent boutiques, galleries and Place des Vosges, one of the oldest planned squares in Paris. Worth a slow wander, especially early morning before the crowds. Weekends get packed and shops along Rue des Rosiers are shoulder to shoulder.

A climb through Montmartre's steep, cobbled streets, past the last working Paris vineyard, up to the Sacré-Cœur basilica and its free panoramic terrace. The view is real and free. Place du Tertre at the top is a tourist-trap artist market, walk past it rather than paying for a portrait.

A self-guided walk linking 19th-century glass-roofed shopping arcades (Galerie Vivienne, Passage des Panoramas, Passage du Grand-Cerf) that have become a popular photo route. Free, atmospheric, and a good rainy-day option. Some passages close early evening and on Sundays, check before building a route around them.

Walk two streets away from a landmark and the bakery quality goes up while the price drops. A real boulangerie beats a chain bakery every time, even the famous chains near the sights.

The unglamorous residential streets have better ratio of quality to price than anywhere near the Eiffel Tower or the Champs-Élysées. Order it saignant if you want it properly rare.

The brasserie's Alsatian half: sauerkraut piled with sausage and pork, or a tiered plateau of oysters and shellfish, both served all afternoon when bistros are shut.

Covered markets where you can buy by the gram and eat on a bench nearby; cheaper and fresher than a restaurant cheese plate.

The Marais' historic Jewish quarter has a strip of falafel counters; a sandwich runs well under a sit-down lunch anywhere else in the neighborhood.

Ham, butter, a fresh baguette, nothing else. The everyday lunch of the whole city and a fair test of how good a bakery's bread actually is.

Natural wine bars serving a few small plates instead of a full menu are where a lot of the city's better casual cooking has moved.

Genuinely touristy at this point, and some of the famous houses charge a premium for what a smaller neighborhood patisserie does just as well. Worth trying once, not worth a special trip.

A fixed two or three course lunch, often the same kitchen and ingredients as the pricier dinner menu at half the cost. The best way to eat well in Paris without overspending.

A croissant sliced open and stuffed with raw cookie dough then baked again, invented by baker Stephane Louvard in 2022. It went from 100 to 2,000 sold a day after TikTok found it. It earned the hype. It's genuinely good, but you're paying about 7 euros and queueing for a pastry, not a meal. Go early or skip it if you hate lines.

Lebanese street-food spot from the Kubri team, open since spring 2026, built around 24-hour marinated farrouj meshwi chicken charbroiled and wrapped with toum garlic sauce. The chicken and toum are the real draw and worth the wait most days. Quality is inconsistent though, some reviewers got undercooked or fatty pieces, and the portion feels small for the price. Order confidently but don't expect it every visit.

Long-running bakery in the 9th/10th with a babka, a ham-and-cheese viennoiserie, and a cinnamon roll that keep coming up as the reason people detour there. Not a flash-in-the-pan opening, it's been going since 2016 and still pulls a line. Worth it if you're already in the neighborhood, not worth crossing the city for.

A cluster of bakeries in these two arrondissements now run lunch counters off the same ovens: sourdough sandwiches, focaccia, and elevated viennoiserie sitting next to the bread. A real shift in how Paris bakeries operate, not one address. Good for a quick, better-than-average lunch if you're already walking that stretch.

A cluster of new bakery-coffee hybrids opened across Paris this fall, several with international angles: Japanese-style cheesecake, Norwegian coffee, Hong Kong cafe format, alongside classic French flans and Paris-Brest. Worth a stop if you're already nearby. It's spread across many arrondissements rather than one strip, so it's not a single trip-worthy destination.

A minimalist Japanese-style soufflé cheesecake, marketed as needing only two ingredients, has started appearing on Paris pastry counters. Light and less sweet than a French cheesecake. Grab one if you spot it. Still too rare in Paris to plan a trip around.