Paris in 3 Days: A Walkable Itinerary That Works

Three days is enough to see the essential Paris if you stop trying to cover every arrondissement and instead group the sights by neighbourhood. The plan below runs from the medieval heart on the islands, through the great museums and the Eiffel Tower, to Montmartre and the Opera district, and every day ends close to a good place for dinner.

How to think about three days in Paris

The city is compact, but the distances between famous sights add up quickly if you zigzag. The classic mistake is to put the Louvre in the morning, Montmartre at lunch and the Eiffel Tower at sunset with long metro rides in between. Here each day has one centre of gravity, and most of the movement is on foot or along the Seine.

Plan on comfortable shoes, a refillable bottle and one big indoor visit per day so that rain does not wreck the schedule. Opening hours, closing days and ticket rules change by season and by year, and some monuments require a timed reservation, so check each official website a few days before you travel. If you are especially interested in galleries, our guide to the best museums in London shows how the same logic of one big museum per day works in another capital.

Day 1: The islands and the Marais

Morning: Notre-Dame and Sainte-Chapelle

Start early on the Île de la Cité, where Paris began. Notre-Dame de Paris reopened to visitors after the 2019 fire, and even from the square outside the Gothic façade, the flying buttresses and the new work on the roof are worth a slow walk around. Interior access rules vary, so look at the cathedral's official page before you go.

A few minutes away stands Sainte-Chapelle, built in the thirteenth century to house relics for King Louis IX. The lower chapel is modest, but the upper chapel is almost entirely glass, and on a bright morning the colours on the floor are the reason people queue. It is small, so arriving early or booking a slot helps a lot.

Afternoon: Île Saint-Louis and the Marais

Cross the little bridge to Île Saint-Louis, a quiet island of eighteenth-century townhouses. This is the home of Berthillon, the ice-cream house that locals still treat as the reference, so a scoop here is a sensible reward after the cathedrals.

From there walk north-east into Le Marais. Its narrow streets survived the nineteenth-century rebuilding of Paris, so you get old mansions, small galleries and independent shops. The Musée Carnavalet, devoted to the history of the city, is the best indoor stop in the district and gives context to everything you saw in the morning. For a casual meal, join the line on the rue des Rosiers for falafel at L'As du Fallafel, or browse the stalls at the Marché des Enfants Rouges, one of the oldest covered markets in the city.

Day 2: Museums, gardens and the Eiffel Tower

Morning: the Louvre

The Louvre is a former royal palace and the largest of the Paris museums, so do not try to see it all. Choose three or four goals, such as the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Egyptian rooms, and leave the rest. Book a time slot online in advance and enter early; the queue for the most famous painting is shortest at the opening and in the evening on late-opening days.

Midday: Tuileries and the Orangerie

After the Louvre, walk through the Tuileries Garden and stop at the Musée de l'Orangerie. It is small and calm, and its two oval rooms of Monet's water lilies are an easy way to rest your eyes after the crowds. Lunch can be a simple café stop in the garden or a short walk toward Saint-Germain.

Afternoon: Musée d'Orsay and the river

Cross the Seine to the Musée d'Orsay, housed in a former railway station. Its Impressionist and Post-Impressionist rooms are the most visited, and the building itself, with its giant station clock, is half of the attraction. If you still have energy, the Musée Rodin is a quieter alternative with sculpture in a garden, including The Thinker.

Evening: the Eiffel Tower

End the day at the Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 World's Fair. You can climb it, but many travellers enjoy it just as much from the Champ de Mars or from a bridge such as the Pont de Bir-Hakeim. If you want to go up, buy tickets online ahead of time, because the same-day lines can be long. In the evening the tower lights up at the start of each hour for a few minutes, a free show for anyone standing nearby.

Day 3: Montmartre, the Opera and a local finish

Morning: Sacré-Cœur and the hill

Go up to Montmartre early, before the tour groups. The white dome of Sacré-Cœur gives one of the best free views over the city, and the lanes behind it still hold the atmosphere that attracted painters a century ago. Walk down the back streets rather than the main stairs and you will find small cafés where people actually live.

Midday: Palais Garnier

Take the metro or a long downhill walk to the Palais Garnier, the nineteenth-century opera house. Even if you will not see a performance, a visit to the grand staircase and the auditorium shows the Second Empire taste for spectacle. Nearby department-store terraces offer a free panorama if you prefer shopping to museums.

Afternoon: Left Bank cafés or Père-Lachaise

You have two good options. For a classic Paris afternoon, head to Saint-Germain-des-Prés for a coffee at the Café de Flore and a slow walk through the Luxembourg Garden. For something more atmospheric, visit Père-Lachaise, the huge hillside cemetery where Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Édith Piaf and Jim Morrison are buried. Take a map; the paths are confusing.

Practical advice for the three days

• Book the Louvre, Sainte-Chapelle and the Eiffel Tower early; they are the three places most likely to sell out.
• A multi-day public transport pass is usually cheaper than single tickets if you take the metro more than a few times a day, but compare current prices on the official transport site.
• Many museums close one day a week, which differs by museum, so build the day order around that.
• Keep an eye on your phone and bag on the metro and around the major monuments; pickpocketing is the most common complaint.
• Eat lunch like a local: a fixed-price lunch menu in a side street is usually better value than anything within sight of a monument.

If you have an extra day or different tastes

With a fourth day, the Château de Versailles is the obvious excursion, but it takes most of a day, so do not squeeze it into this plan. Food-focused travellers can swap the Orsay afternoon for a long walk through the Marché d'Aligre and a table at Le Procope, one of the oldest cafés in the city, or at the popular Bouillon Chartier, where the dining room is as much of a draw as the menu.

Travelling with children? Replace the Opera with the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, which is far from the centre but easy to enjoy for a family. If you are building a longer European trip, you may also like our article on the best things to do in Amsterdam, a good next stop by train.

Turn it into your own plan

Every traveller walks at a different speed, so use this itinerary as a skeleton and adjust the order to your hotel, your energy and the weather. You can build a day-by-day version with opening-day reminders in the Paris planner, or read more about the city before you decide in the Paris guide and the overview of France.