Sightseeing in Paris

Sightseeing in Paris is unusual: the monuments stand close enough together that the route, not the list, is the real decision. Along two kilometres of river you pass the Louvre, the Orsay in its old railway station, the Orangerie with its two oval rooms of water lilies, then Notre-Dame, the Conciergerie and Sainte-Chapelle on the island where the city began — the last of them fifteen metres of thirteenth-century glass. The tower and the Arc de Triomphe close the axis westward; Sacre-Coeur watches from the hill north. Walk the lot in a day and you see the outside of everything and the inside of nothing, which is the trap.

The quarters are the other half. The Marais escaped Haussmann, so its streets still bend: the Place des Vosges, the Picasso Museum, the Jewish quarter around Rue des Rosiers. The Latin Quarter keeps the Pantheon, the Sorbonne and the Luxembourg gardens; Canal Saint-Martin and Belleville are where the city goes when nobody is looking. Guided walks cover these in two or three hours; electric bikes cover twice the ground and make sense after dark, when the monuments are lit. Beyond the ring it turns into full days with a driver: Versailles, Giverny, Fontainebleau, the Loire, Mont Saint-Michel.

Practical. Check what is shut before you build the day: Tuesday removes the Louvre, Monday removes the Orsay and Versailles. Anything popular runs on timed entry and summer slots go days ahead — the real reason to take a tour with tickets attached. April to June and September to October are the walking months; winter is grey rather than cold, but the light goes by five. A group walk costs about what lunch costs; the same guide privately is several times that and buys pace, not access. Service is included in restaurant bills, and a walking guide is tipped five to ten euros a head only if the walk earned it. A metro day pass pays for itself by the fourth journey. And the days out are long — six hours at the short end, fourteen at the far one — so pick one.