Explore Saint-Denis

The Grande Galerie de l'Évolution is a natural history gallery in the Jardin des Plantes, inside a glass-roofed hall built in 1889. A 1994 renovation turned it into a display on evolution and biodiversity, with around 9,500 taxidermied specimens arranged over several floors, including a herd of African savanna animals in the central nave.

The Musée Zadkine occupies the house and garden studio of sculptor Ossip Zadkine in the 6th arrondissement, near the Luxembourg Gardens. It became a public museum in 1982 and shows around 300 of his sculptures together with drawings, photographs and tapestries, with more works displayed in the garden.

A mosque in Paris's 5th arrondissement, completed in 1926 in the Moorish Revival style around a courtyard modelled on the Alhambra in Granada. The oldest mosque in mainland France, it holds prayer rooms, a library, a garden, a hammam, a gift shop and a restaurant.

The Maison de Balzac is a writer's house museum at 47 Rue Raynouard in Passy, the only surviving residence of novelist Honoré de Balzac. He rented its ground-floor apartment from 1840 to 1847 under a false name while hiding from creditors, and wrote much of La Comédie humaine there. The city of Paris acquired the house in 1949.

A gallery of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in the Jardin des Plantes, designed by Charles Rohault de Fleury and opened in 1841 as France's first purpose-built museum building. Its "Treasures of the Earth" exhibition shows around 600 minerals, gemstones and giant crystals from a wider collection of some 770,000 specimens.

Musée Marmottan Monet is an art museum on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, in a former hunting lodge bought by Jules Marmottan in 1882 and bequeathed with his son Paul's collection to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1932. It opened in 1934 and holds over 300 Impressionist works, mainly Monet, after a 1966 donation by his son Michel.

The Musée Bourdelle preserves the working studio of sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, who used it from 1885 until his death in 1929, at 18 Rue Antoine Bourdelle. It opened as a museum in 1949 and was later extended by architects Henri Gautruche and Christian de Portzamparc. The collection holds more than 500 of his plaster, marble and bronze works.

A film archive and museum founded in 1936 by Henri Langlois and Lotte Eisner, housed since 2005 in a building by Frank Gehry at Bercy that formerly held the American Center. It holds one of the largest collections of film-related documents and objects in the world and runs the Musée Méliès, on the pioneering film-maker Georges Méliès.

The Musée de la Libération de Paris – Musée du Général Leclerc – Musée Jean Moulin occupies former toll pavilions at Place Denfert-Rochereau, above the bunker that served as Colonel Rol-Tanguy's command post in August 1944. It moved to this address in 2019 and covers the liberation of Paris and the wartime Resistance.

The Catacombs of Paris are underground ossuaries beneath the city's former stone quarries, reached from a small entrance pavilion near Place Denfert-Rochereau. From 1786, the remains of more than six million people were moved here from Paris's overflowing cemeteries. A signed route leads visitors through about 1.5 kilometres of tunnels lined with bones.

The François-Mitterrand site is the main building of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, designed by architect Dominique Perrault and opened in 1996 around an esplanade with four glass towers shaped like open books. It holds a public library, a research library and exhibition spaces.

The Château de Vincennes is a former royal residence and fortress on the eastern edge of Paris, largely built between 1361 and 1369. Its keep, a fortified 14th-century tower, held the private apartments of French kings, and its Flamboyant Gothic chapel was begun in 1379 and completed in 1552. Most of the complex is open to visitors.

The Paris Zoological Park, commonly called the Vincennes Zoo, is run by the National Museum of Natural History on 14.5 hectares of the Bois de Vincennes. It opened in 1934 and groups animals by biozone rather than species, with a tropical greenhouse. Its landmark is a 65-metre artificial rock visible across the park.

A tennis complex in south-west Paris, built in 1928 and named after the World War I aviator Roland Garros, who made the first solo flight across the Mediterranean Sea. It hosts the French Open each May and June on clay courts, with twenty courts in total including Court Philippe Chatrier, Court Suzanne Lenglen and Court Simonne Mathieu.

Aquaboulevard is an indoor and outdoor water park in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, with swimming pools, water slides, a wave pool and a sand beach area under a glazed roof. The same site also has tennis and squash courts, a gym and shops.