Explorer Saint-Denis

The Champs-Élysées is an avenue running about 1.9 kilometres between Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe, lined with plane trees, shops, cinemas and cafés. Laid out as a garden promenade in the 17th century, it took its present form through 19th-century redevelopment.

The Arc de Triomphe stands at the centre of Place Charles de Gaulle, at the western end of the Champs-Élysées, commissioned to honour those who fought in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Victories and generals' names are engraved on its surfaces, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier lies beneath its vault. Stairs lead to a terrace at the top.

A former royal palace on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris's 1st arrondissement, built for Cardinal Richelieu between 1633 and 1639 and later home to the Dukes of Orléans. The building now houses the Ministry of Culture, the Conseil d'État and the Constitutional Council; its arcaded garden and courtyards are open to the public, the interior is not.

Bourse de Commerce is a circular 18th-century building in central Paris, built in 1763-1767 as a grain exchange and topped by a dome rebuilt in copper and glass in the 19th century. Since 2021 it has housed the Pinault Collection of contemporary art, with galleries arranged around the domed rotunda under a 50-year lease from the city.

Place de la Concorde is a public square between the Tuileries Garden and the Champs-Élysées, laid out by architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel in the 1770s. At its centre stands a 3,300-year-old Egyptian obelisk from Luxor, a gift from Egypt's ruler erected in 1836, flanked by two 19th-century fountains.

A contemporary art institution founded in 1984 by the Cartier luxury house. It moved in 2025 to a new building on Place du Palais-Royal, opposite the Louvre, designed by architect Jean Nouvel. The space shows changing exhibitions of contemporary art and holds a collection of over 1,500 works.

A public garden between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde in Paris's 1st arrondissement, laid out by Catherine de' Medici in 1564 as the grounds of the Tuileries Palace and opened to the public in 1667. Statues, fountains and two octagonal ponds line its formal, tree-bordered paths.

A Beaux-Arts palace built for the 1900 World's Fair by architect Charles Girault, facing the Grand Palais across Avenue Winston-Churchill. It houses the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts, with collections spanning antiquity to the 20th century, including the Dutuit collection of medieval and Renaissance works and the Tuck collection of 18th-century furniture.

A glass-roofed exhibition hall in Paris's 8th arrondissement, built for the 1900 Universal Exposition on the site of the former Palace of Industry. Its Beaux-Arts stone facades and iron-and-glass vaults, renovated and reopened in 2025, now host temporary art exhibitions and events.

The Musée de l'Orangerie is an art gallery in the west corner of the Tuileries Garden, in a former orangery built in 1852 to shelter the garden's citrus trees. It houses eight large Water Lilies murals by Claude Monet, installed in two oval rooms, alongside works by Cézanne, Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso, Renoir and Soutine.

The Louvre is a national art museum housed in the former Louvre Palace on the Right Bank of the Seine. Its collection spans antiquity to the mid-19th century and includes the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. The glass pyramid entrance in the Cour Napoléon was added in 1989.

The Musée national Picasso-Paris occupies the Hôtel Salé, a 17th-century mansion in the Marais district, and holds the museum's collection devoted to Pablo Picasso. Its roughly 5,000 works span paintings, sculpture, drawings, ceramics and prints, alongside the artist's personal archive. Most pieces came from his estate after his death in 1973.

A single-span steel arch bridge over the Seine in Paris, built between 1896 and 1900 and named for Tsar Alexander III of Russia, who had signed the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1892. Its Beaux-Arts design by Joseph Cassien-Bernard and Gaston Cousin carries Art Nouveau lamps and four gilt-bronze statues of Fames at the approaches.

Musée Cognacq-Jay is an 18th-century decorative arts museum in the Hôtel Donon, a Renaissance mansion in the Marais. The roughly 1,200-item collection, formed between 1900 and 1925 by department-store founders Théodore-Ernest Cognacq and Marie-Louise Jaÿ, includes paintings by Fragonard, Chardin and Boucher alongside porcelain and jewellery.

A museum of French art from 1848 to 1914, housed in a former railway station, the Gare d'Orsay, built in 1898-1900 to designs by Victor Laloux and others. It opened as a museum in 1986 and holds the world's largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings, alongside sculpture and decorative arts.

A museum of the history of Paris, opened in 1880 in the 16th-century Hôtel Carnavalet and extended in 1989 into the neighbouring Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau. Its roughly 625,000 objects trace the city from prehistory through the Enlightenment and the Revolution to the 20th century, displayed across forty rooms after a 2021 renovation.

The oldest standing bridge across the Seine in Paris, built between 1578 and 1607 in two separate spans linking the Île de la Cité to both riverbanks. Despite its name, meaning 'New Bridge', it was the first bridge in the city built without houses lining its sides.

A cemetery opened in 1804 on the order of Napoleon Bonaparte, laid out by architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart across 44 hectares of landscaped, tree-lined paths in eastern Paris. More than a million people are buried here, including Frédéric Chopin, Honoré de Balzac, Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, alongside a columbarium and crematorium added in 1894.

The Conciergerie is a former royal palace and prison on the Île de la Cité, built as part of the medieval Palais de la Cité alongside the Sainte-Chapelle. During the French Revolution it held prisoners awaiting trial, including Marie Antoinette, before their execution. Two large medieval halls survive, and the building is now a national monument.

The Monnaie de Paris is the institution that produces France's coins, established in the 9th century and housed since the 1770s in a neoclassical building on Quai de Conti by architect Jacques-Denis Antoine. Coin production moved to Pessac in 1973, and the Paris building now holds a museum of numismatic collections.