Explorer Saint-Denis

Palais Galliera is an Italian Renaissance-style palace built between 1879 and 1894 by architect Léon Ginain, funded by the Duchess of Galliera. It is the City of Paris's fashion museum, holding about 70,000 garments and accessories from the 18th century to today, shown through rotating temporary exhibitions rather than a permanent display.

The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris occupies the east wing of the Palais de Tokyo, built for the 1937 International Exhibition. Opened in 1961 and reopened in 2019 after renovation, it holds around 15,000 works of 20th- and 21st-century art, including paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Léger.

The Sainte-Chapelle is a Gothic royal chapel built in the 13th century within the former Palais de la Cité, on the Île de la Cité. It was commissioned by King Louis IX to house relics of the Passion and is known for stained-glass windows that rise nearly 15 metres. The chapel now stands within the Paris Palais de Justice complex.

The Guimet Museum is a museum of Asian art on Place d'Iéna, founded by industrialist Émile Guimet, first opened in Lyon in 1879 and moved to Paris in 1889. Its collection covers Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Tibet, India and Nepal, with sculpture, ceramics and Buddhist art from ancient to medieval periods.

The Palais de Tokyo is a building on Avenue du Président Wilson built for the 1937 International Exhibition. Its western wing has hosted a contemporary art centre since 2002, staging temporary exhibitions across large industrial-style galleries. The eastern wing houses the city's Museum of Modern Art.

Maison de Victor Hugo is a writer's house museum on Place des Vosges, in the apartment where Victor Hugo lived from 1832 to 1848. Its rooms include a Chinese-style living room he decorated himself and a medieval-style dining room, leading to a reconstruction of the bedroom where he died in 1885.

Notre-Dame de Paris is a Gothic Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité, built between 1163 and 1345. A 2019 fire destroyed its roof and spire; the cathedral reopened in December 2024 after restoration. Visitors can see its flying buttresses, rose windows, sculpted portals and the Great Organ.

A military museum inside the Hôtel des Invalides, a complex Louis XIV ordered built in 1670 to house disabled soldiers. Formed in 1905 from two older collections, it covers military history from antiquity to the Second World War, and its Dome Church holds Napoleon's tomb, completed in 1861, twenty years after his remains returned from Saint Helena.

The Jardin d'Acclimatation is a 19-hectare amusement park in the northern Bois de Boulogne, opened in 1860 by Napoleon III as a zoological and acclimatisation garden where plants and animals from French colonies were studied. It has operated as a family leisure park since the 1930s, with rides, gardens and a farm, and borders the Fondation Louis Vuitton.

The Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac is an anthropology museum near the Eiffel Tower, designed by architect Jean Nouvel and opened in 2006. Its collection covers the art and material culture of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, displayed along a curving ramp and in a garden-side building. A planted wall covers part of its street-facing facade.

The Louis Vuitton Foundation is an art museum and cultural centre funded by the LVMH group, in a glass-sailed building designed by Frank Gehry. It opened in 2014 next to the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne. The museum shows modern and contemporary art exhibitions across several galleries.

The Musée Rodin occupies the Hôtel Biron, an 18th-century mansion in the 7th arrondissement, and its surrounding garden. It holds the sculptor Auguste Rodin's work, including bronze casts of The Thinker and The Gates of Hell displayed outdoors. The museum opened in 1919, after Rodin donated his collection to the French state.

The Aquarium de Paris is housed partly underground in the Jardins du Trocadéro, facing the Eiffel Tower across the Seine. It holds around 500 species in some forty tanks, including sharks, jellyfish and coral-reef fish. The aquarium also runs a cinema and screens films under the name Cineaqua.

The Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine is an architecture museum in the Palais de Chaillot. Founded in 1879 by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and reopened in its present form in 2007, it displays full-scale plaster casts of French monumental sculpture, including cathedral portals, alongside models of French buildings since 1850.

France's national maritime museum, established in 1827 and housed since 1937 in the Palais de Chaillot, overlooking the Seine. Its collection, dating back to a 1748 gift of ship models to Louis XV, covers naval history, model ships, weapons and maritime art. The museum reopened in 2023 after a renovation.

The Eiffel Tower is a 330-metre lattice iron tower on the Champ de Mars, built between 1887 and 1889 by Gustave Eiffel's company as the entrance arch for the 1889 World's Fair. Three levels are open to visitors, reached by lift or stairs, with restaurants on the first two floors and Eiffel's restored apartment on the top level.

A cabaret theatre in the Latin Quarter, on the site of a hall first built in 1803. The current building, completed in 1889, uses a metal structure designed by Gustave Eiffel, built at the same time as his tower. It reopened as a cabaret in 1977 and seats 720 for nightly dinner shows of revues and ballet.

A 23-hectare public garden in Paris's 6th arrondissement, laid out from 1612 for Marie de' Medici around the Luxembourg Palace, now the seat of the French Senate. Lawns, tree-lined walks, an octagonal pond with model sailboats and the 1620 Medici Fountain fill the grounds.

The Panthéon stands on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in the Latin Quarter, built between 1758 and 1790 to a design by Jacques-Germain Soufflot. Commissioned by Louis XV as a church for Paris's patron saint, it was turned into a secular mausoleum during the Revolution. Its crypt holds the tombs of figures including Voltaire, Rousseau and Marie Curie.

The Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes is a zoo within the Jardin des Plantes botanical garden, founded in 1794 with animals taken from the royal menagerie at Versailles. It is one of the oldest zoos in the world and keeps small and medium-sized mammals, birds and reptiles across historic enclosures and aviaries.