Explore Saint-Germain-en-Laye

The Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a former royal palace west of Paris, rebuilt for Francis I from 1539 around Saint Louis's 13th-century chapel and used by the court until Louis XIV moved to Versailles in 1682. Since 1867 it has housed the Musée d'Archéologie nationale, and its gardens include Le Nôtre's Grande Terrasse above the Seine.

The Arboretum de Versailles-Chèvreloup is a tree collection of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle covering about 200 hectares beside the park of the Palace of Versailles. Planting began in 1924 on a former royal hunting ground; trees are grouped by botanical family, by region of origin and as garden varieties, and there are greenhouses and a fuchsia garden.

The formal gardens of the Château de Versailles, covering about 800 hectares west of the palace and laid out from the 1660s by André Le Nôtre in the French formal style he perfected there. Parterres, statues, fountains and the Grand Canal are set within a surrounding belt of woodland, bordered by the towns of Versailles and Le Chesnay.

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.

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 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.