Paris
The Eiffel Tower grows up to fifteen centimetres taller in summer, and flashes for five minutes on the hour after dark. Paris holds more classified monuments than any other French city.
Paris in a nutshell
Paris: what to expect
We looked at how travellers actually plan Paris on Stippl, across 311,000+ planned stops in France.
Paris is a walking city with a metro underneath it, and most of a first visit sits inside a five-kilometre circle. The Seine splits it: the Louvre, the Marais and the Arc de Triomphe on the right bank, the Musée d'Orsay's station clock and Saint-Germain on the left. The Eiffel Tower flashes for five minutes on the hour after dark and that costs nothing. Sainte-Chapelle holds fifteen windows of thirteenth-century glass, Montmartre still has a vineyard, and Versailles is a day.
Nobody routes through Paris, they arrive at it, and it pairs with nothing. Nearly four in ten of the trips carrying Paris begin there and more than one in eight go nowhere else in France at all. Every French partner big enough to measure, Nice, Lyon, Marseille and Bordeaux, turns up on a Paris trip less often than on an ordinary one: people do not route through Paris, they arrive at it.
Keep it short and dense rather than the fortnight base you might want elsewhere: two nights is the typical stay. Only a quarter of Paris stays run four nights or more. It is also the one French city our travellers plan right through the winter, with a fifth of arrivals falling between November and February, where Nice manages one in twenty. Budget for it: a logged room here runs well above the French norm, and nothing about the city is cheap by default.
À qui Paris s'adresse
First-time Europe travellers.
It is a trip's first stop 38% of the time and its only stop 12% of the time: for a large share of our travellers, Paris is the trip
Museums and art, above all
Ours is the only geo in this layer where logged sights outnumber logged meals
Travelling outside summer
A fifth of Paris arrivals are planned for November–February, beaten in France only by Strasbourg, and there only because of the Christmas market
Walkers.
The distance between the Louvre, Notre-Dame, the Marais and Saint-Germain is a comfortable afternoon
Budget travellers, with effort.
Hostels, bakery lunches, free first-Sunday museums and a €12.30 day pass make it workable; nothing about it is cheap by default
Quand partir pour Paris
Shoulder
April–June, September–October
the answer every source gives, and our own month curve agrees: these five months carry 47.0% of Paris arrivals
High summer
July–August
hot, full, and the month Parisians leave. Independent restaurants and small shops close for weeks in August
Winter
November–February
19.5% of our arrivals, spread evenly across the four months. Strasbourg takes a larger share (26.0%) but concentrates it into December; Paris is the French city that works through the whole cold half of the year
- First Friday of the month, after 6 p.m. Free entry to the Louvre for everyone, except in July and August
Add your Paris dates and we'll flag the weather
Stippl shows the season, crowds and prices for every stop on your route.
Décrivez votre voyage et obtenez un itinéraire pour Paris en quelques secondes
Tout ce guide est déjà dans Stippl. Dites au planificateur combien de temps vous avez et ce que vous aimez : il construit l'itinéraire, les journées et les temps de trajet, et vous modifiez ce que vous voulez.
Ce qu'il ne faut pas manquer à Paris
Photo by Maximilian Orlowsky via Pexels
Photo by Bharat Patil via Unsplash
Photo by Randy Yip via UnsplashWatch the Eiffel Tower sparkle
the tower flashes for five minutes on the hour after dark; from the Champ de Mars or Trocadéro, and it costs nothing
The Louvre in one targeted run
the collection is too large to; pick two wings, use a night opening on Wednesday or Friday, and leave
Musée d'Orsay's clock face
the Impressionist collection inside a Beaux-Arts railway station, with the station clock still in the wall
Walk Montmartre before the coaches
Sacré-Cœur, the vineyard, Place du Tertre and the lanes below it, early
A day at Versailles
the Passport ticket is €25 in low season and €35 in high, €22/€32 for EEA residents; go early or take the discounted late-afternoon slot
Sainte-Chapelle's upper chapel
fifteen windows of 13th-century glass on Île de la Cité, and a short visit rather than a museum day
Les quartiers de Paris
Montmartre (18th)
history-buffs
A hilltop village above the city, crowned by Sacré-Cœur, cobbled lanes, a working vineyard, cabarets
The one part of Paris that still feels like a village.
Canal Saint-Martin (10th)
Local evenings
Iron footbridges over a tree-lined canal, coffee roasters, canal-side apéro, very little English
Le Marais (3rd–4th)
art-lovers
Medieval lanes opening onto Place des Vosges, Renaissance mansions, Jewish delis, galleries and LGBTQ+ bars
Picasso and Carnavalet museums, and the best walking in the city.
Saint-Germain-des-Prés (6th)
Classic Paris
Left Bank literary heartland: Café de Flore, Les Deux Magots, designer boutiques, Jardin du Luxembourg
Old-world cafés and the city's calmest big park.
Latin Quarter (5th)
Cheapest central
The Sorbonne's student district, pre-Haussmann streets, Shakespeare and Company, the Panthéon
Affordable bistros inside a medieval street plan.
1st (Louvre / Palais-Royal)
First visits
Louvre, Tuileries, Sainte-Chapelle, the arcaded Palais-Royal
Everything monumental within walking distance of everything else.
See every Paris neighbourhood on one map
Save the areas you like and Stippl plots your days so you're not crossing the city twice.
Où loger à Paris
Choose the arrondissement first and the property second. The gap between a good and a bad Paris stay is almost entirely where it is
Montmartre (18th)
€80–170
A hilltop village above the city, crowned by Sacré-Cœur, cobbled lanes, a working vineyard, cabarets
Canal Saint-Martin (10th)
€90–180
Iron footbridges over a tree-lined canal, coffee roasters, canal-side apéro, very little English
Le Marais (3rd–4th)
€120–260
Medieval lanes opening onto Place des Vosges, Renaissance mansions, Jewish delis, galleries and LGBTQ+ bars
Saint-Germain-des-Prés (6th)
€150–320
Left Bank literary heartland: Café de Flore, Les Deux Magots, designer boutiques, Jardin du Luxembourg
Latin Quarter (5th)
€90–180
The Sorbonne's student district, pre-Haussmann streets, Shakespeare and Company, the Panthéon
1st (Louvre / Palais-Royal)
€160–350
Louvre, Tuileries, Sainte-Chapelle, the arcaded Palais-Royal
Que manger à Paris
The protected daily loaf; the queue outside a boulangerie is the quality signal
All-butter, bought before ten and eaten standing up
Grilled ham and cheese under béchamel; the madame adds a fried egg
Onion soup under a bread-and-gruyère crust
Snails in garlic-parsley butter, eaten with tongs and a small fork
Steak, thin fries, one sauce, no ceremony
Sweet wheat crêpes and savoury buckwheat galettes, the Breton half of Paris
Almond meringue sandwiches; the tea-salon export
Île Saint-Louis's ice-cream institution, sold across the island
Discover food spots in Stippl
Find restaurants and markets on the map, save them to your itinerary, works offline too.
Paris customs and what not to do
Say *bonjour* on entering
and au revoir on leaving. In a shop, a bakery or a bar this is not politeness, it is the opening of the transaction, and skipping it reads as rudeness
Open with French
even if it collapses immediately. Three words before switching to English changes the reception measurably; leading in English does not
Service is unhurried by design
The bill comes when you ask for it; waiting to be checked on is waiting for something that will not happen
Dress unremarkable, not smart
Nobody is looking, and beachwear away from a pool is the one thing that is noticed
Sunday closes a lot of the city
though the Marais is the long-standing exception and trades all day
À faire
- Greet before you ask, every time.
- Take the lunch formule rather than the dinner card if money matters.
- Buy museum and tower tickets with a time slot, in advance.
- Use the first-Friday-evening free window at the Louvre if your dates allow it.
À éviter
- Don't book beside the Eiffel Tower to save time; it will cost you time.
- Don't expect independent restaurants to be open through August.
- Don't take a photograph of a person on Place du Tertre and walk off, the portraitists charge.
- Don't leave a bag on the back of a café chair.
Budget quotidien à Paris
Budget
€70–110
Hostel dorm, bakery breakfast and lunch, day pass, one paid museum
Mid-range
€160–260
Three-star hotel or apartment, a sit-down lunch and dinner, two or three paid sights
High-end
€400+
Four-star and up in the 1st, 6th or 8th, tasting menus, taxis
Track what you actually spend
Set a daily budget per country and log expenses in any currency while you travel.
Anecdotes sur Paris
The Eiffel Tower grows up to 15 cm taller in summer as the iron expands
The Louvre holds over 380,000 works and displays around 35,000 of them
Paris has more than 1,800 classified historic monuments, more than any other French city
The Louvre is free to everyone on the first Friday evening of the month, except in July and August: a rule most guides quote without the exception
Montmartre has a working vineyard, the Clos Montmartre, whose harvest is a neighbourhood festival in October
Conseils locaux pour Paris
A single is €2.55
A single Metro–Train–RER ticket is €2.55 and the Navigo day pass is €12.30, zones 1–5, airport journeys excluded (fares of 1 January 2026)
The paper carnet is gone
the cardboard ten-ticket one, at least. Buy a Navigo Easy card for €2 and load up to 20 trips onto it, from about €1.64 a trip
The bus is for sightseeing
The bus is slower than the metro and better for seeing the city, because Paris traffic is dense
Vélib', not at rush hour
Vélib' is the city bike scheme, with more than 20,000 bikes and around 1,800 stations, and it is a poor idea in rush-hour traffic
Pickpockets on Line 1
Pickpocketing is the crime a visitor actually meets, and it is concentrated where visitors are: the 1st, 8th and 18th arrondissements, and Metro Line 1 above all other lines
There are no no-go areas
none official, anyway. Sources name the 10th around Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est, and the northern 18th and 19th, as places to be alert after dark rather than to avoid
Paris questions, answered
With the nights, not the sights. Paris is the first stop on 38.05% of the France trips planned on Stippl, so it usually sets the arrival date and everything else hangs off it. Block the nights out in Stippl first, fill the days after, and show the route to someone who has been before you book.
Two or three. Two nights is the normal stay across the 82,000+ stops planned in Paris on Stippl, and three is what a first visit wants once Versailles is in the plan. A fourth buys you the smaller museums and a morning with nowhere to be, which is the best day of the trip.
It happens more often than you would think: 27.78% of Paris stops planned on Stippl are a single night, usually an arrival or a rail change rather than a visit. One night buys you one neighbourhood and one museum. If Paris is the reason for the trip, give it two at the very least.
For the summit lift, yes, and the slots go weeks ahead in summer. The fallback everybody forgets is the stairs to the second floor: those tickets are sold on the day, the queue is shorter and the view over Paris is the one you came for. Buy on the official site rather than a reseller.
Yes, and give it the whole day rather than a morning. The palace is only half of it; the gardens, the two Trianons and the hamlet are what people actually remember, and they take hours on foot. Go early on a weekday with a timed entry booked, and skip it if Paris only has two days.
Paris is safe for the vast majority of visitors, and the risk is theft rather than anything worse. Pickpockets work the metro, the queue at the Louvre and the steps at Montmartre, so keep a bag closed and in front of you in a crowd. The central arrondissements are fine to walk at night.
Every guide is written by the Stippl editors and checked against the trips our travellers actually plan. Spotted something out of date? Let us know.
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