Explore Saint-Denis

The Basilica of Saint-Denis, a former abbey church north of Paris and a cathedral since 1966, has a choir completed in 1144 under Abbot Suger that marks the beginning of Gothic architecture. Its royal necropolis holds more than 70 tomb effigies and monuments of French kings and queens, from Dagobert to Louis XVIII, and its north tower and spire are being rebuilt.

A museum in a group of 17th-century houses on Montmartre, including the Maison du Bel Air, where the actor Rosimond lived from 1680. Renoir painted here in 1876, and Suzanne Valadon and her son Maurice Utrillo later lived and worked on the site. Opened in 1960, it shows paintings, photographs and posters on the district's history, in a garden replanted after Renoir's paintings.

The Sacré-Cœur is a Roman Catholic basilica on the hill of Montmartre, built between 1875 and 1914 in a Romano-Byzantine style from travertine stone that whitens with rain. Its dome can be climbed for views over Paris, and the interior holds a large mosaic of Christ above the choir.

Dalí Paris, formerly Espace Dalí, is a museum near Place du Tertre in Montmartre devoted to Salvador Dalí. Opened in 1991, it displays around 300 sculptures, engravings and lithographs based on Dalí's surrealist work, curated from the Dalí Universe collection.

A wax museum on the Grands Boulevards, founded in 1882 by journalist Arthur Meyer and named after caricaturist Alfred Grévin, its first artistic director. It displays around 450 wax figures of historical and contemporary personalities, and includes the Palais des Mirages, a mirrored hall built for the 1900 World's Fair.

The Musée Jacquemart-André occupies a mansion built in 1869-1875 for banker Édouard André, on Boulevard Haussmann. He and his wife, painter Nélie Jacquemart, filled it with Italian Renaissance and 18th-century French art, which she bequeathed to the Institut de France. It opened as a museum in 1913 and keeps its original furnished rooms.

A Catholic parish church on Place de la Madeleine in Paris's 8th arrondissement, built in the form of a Greek temple and ringed by Corinthian columns. Planned under Louis XV, redesigned by Napoleon as a monument to his armies, and finished as a church only in 1842, it holds frescoes and sculptures by 19th-century French artists.

A neoclassical building on Place de la Concorde designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel and built between 1757 and 1774, first as the royal furniture repository and, from 1789, as the French Navy's headquarters until 2015. Restored and reopened in 2021, it shows the furnished 18th-century apartments of its royal keeper, gilded naval salons and works from the Al Thani collection.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 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 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.