3 Days in Paris: The Perfect Itinerary by a Local

← The Journal

Three days in Paris is enough — if you stop trying to see everything. What follows is the itinerary I give friends who land at Charles de Gaulle on a Friday morning and fly out Monday: one arrondissement at a time, on foot, with proper coffee stops, a long lunch, and a single well-chosen evening. No queues at dawn, no bus tours, no dinner in a tourist trap on the Champs-Élysées.

See our Paris apartments → Book direct — up to 10% less than Airbnb & Booking

Before you go: the ground rules

Paris is a small city — the twenty arrondissements fit inside what Londoners would call Zone 1 — and that changes how you plan. Do not book a museum in the 16th at 10am and a lunch in the 11th at 12.30; you will spend your holiday underground on Line 1. Instead, pick one rive per half-day and walk it. The best moments here happen between the monuments, not inside them.

Book two things in advance and only two: your timed entry to the Louvre (or the Musée d'Orsay, pick one for a first trip) and your Eiffel Tower slot if you want to go up. Everything else — Notre-Dame's exterior, Sainte-Chapelle, Sacré-Cœur, the Tuileries, every café on this list — is walk-in. Reserve dinner the day before by 6pm; Parisian restaurants are small and the good ones fill by Tuesday.

A note on timing: most museums close on Monday or Tuesday (the Louvre closes Tuesday, Orsay closes Monday), Sunday mornings are for markets, and Sunday evenings the city goes quiet early. If your three days include a Monday, put Versailles or a walking day there, not a museum.

Day 1 — Île de la Cité, Marais & the Right Bank

Start where the city started. Have your first coffee somewhere unglamorous near your apartment — a comptoir, standing up, one euro twenty — and be on the Île de la Cité by 9am. Notre-Dame has reopened after the fire; the exterior is extraordinary again, and the queue for the interior moves faster than it looks. Directly opposite, Sainte-Chapelle is the single most underrated monument in Paris: fifteen metres of 13th-century stained glass, and most tourists walk past it on the way to the cathedral.

Cross the Pont Louis-Philippe into the Marais and slow down. This is the neighbourhood people mean when they say they want to "live like a Parisian" — narrow streets, 17th-century hôtels particuliers, small independent shops that still exist because rents were frozen for decades. Wander Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, cut down Rue Vieille-du-Temple, find Place des Vosges (the oldest planned square in Paris, and still the loveliest) and sit on the grass for twenty minutes. Lunch at Chez Janou for Provençal, or Miznon on Rue des Écouffes for a cheap, brilliant pita.

Spend the afternoon at the Musée Picasso or the Musée Carnavalet — the latter is free, tells the whole history of Paris, and is one of the few museums in this city that never has a queue. By 5pm you want to be on a café terrace with a glass of something cold. Try Le Mary Céleste on Rue Commines, or the tiny bar at Café Charlot on Rue de Bretagne.

Day 1 evening — dinner in the Marais

Do not go far for dinner on your first night; you are jet-lagged and the Marais has everything. For classic bistro, book Chez Julien on Rue du Pont Louis-Philippe — the terrace looks straight at Île Saint-Louis and the pigeon is genuinely good. For something younger and louder, Clamato (the walk-in sister of Septime) does seafood small plates until midnight. If you want a full French experience with white tablecloths, Benoit is the oldest bistro in Paris still open, and it has a Michelin star that it wears lightly.

Afterwards, walk. The Marais at 11pm is one of the great pleasures of the city — lit shopfronts, quiet cobbles, the Seine three minutes away. Do not take the métro home if you can walk it; you learn a city with your feet.

Day 2 — Louvre, Tuileries & Saint-Germain

Book the Louvre for 9am, enter through the Porte des Lions or the Carrousel entrance (never the Pyramid queue), and give yourself two hours — no more. Pick three things and see them properly: the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the top of the Daru staircase, the Vermeers on the second floor of the Richelieu wing, and one gallery you have never heard of. Trying to "do the Louvre" in a day is how people end their Paris trip in tears.

Walk out through the Tuileries. In good weather, rent one of the green metal chairs by the octagonal pond and sit for half an hour with a sandwich from Cédric Grolet Opéra or a jambon-beurre from any decent boulangerie. Cross the Pont Royal to the Left Bank and you are in the 7th; from there it is a fifteen-minute stroll east along Rue de l'Université into Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Saint-Germain in the afternoon is quieter than its reputation suggests. Skip Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore (fine, expensive, full of tourists) and go instead to La Palette on Rue de Seine, where the waiters have been grumpy for forty years and the terrace is perfect. Around it: Galerie Kamel Mennour, the Musée Delacroix hidden in a courtyard on Place de Furstemberg, and every tiny bookshop you could want. If Orsay is on your list, this is the moment — it is a ten-minute walk and open until 9.45pm on Thursdays.

Day 2 evening — Eiffel Tower, done properly

Here is the local's trick: do not go up the Eiffel Tower on your first trip. The view from the top does not include the Eiffel Tower. Instead, be on the Trocadéro terrace, on the Right Bank, at sunset — Line 9, Trocadéro stop, follow the crowd. The tower faces you across the Seine, the lights come on at dusk, and every hour on the hour it sparkles for five minutes. It is corny and it is wonderful.

For dinner, walk down through the Trocadéro gardens, cross the Pont d'Iéna, and eat in the 7th at Les Cocottes de Christian Constant on Rue Saint-Dominique, or further along at Le Petit Cler. If you have booked ahead and want a proper occasion, Arpège is two streets away — three stars, vegetable-led, unforgettable, and priced accordingly.

The Eiffel Tower is a monument to look at, not a viewpoint. Save the queue and drink a glass of wine on Trocadéro instead.

Day 3 — Montmartre & Canal Saint-Martin

Take Line 12 to Abbesses and climb, slowly, to Montmartre. Go early — before 9.30am — and the village that Amélie was filmed in still exists: the vineyard on Rue des Saules, the pink house of La Maison Rose, Place Dalida, the back of Sacré-Cœur without the crowds. Enter the basilica from the side, avoid the funicular, and come down via Rue Lepic and Rue des Martyrs, which is the best food street in northern Paris.

Rue des Martyrs is where I send anyone who says French pastry is overrated. Sébastien Gaudard for the millefeuille, Popelini for choux, Arnaud Delmontel for bread. Have brunch at Hardware Société at the top of the street, or a proper long lunch at Buvette on Rue Henry Monnier.

In the afternoon, cross east to the Canal Saint-Martin (10th and 11th arrondissements). This is the Paris of the last twenty years — natural-wine bars, independent coffee, vintage shops, young families on the quai. Walk from République up the canal to Rue de Marseille, have coffee at Ten Belles, and end the day with an apéro on the water. It is the most honest way to leave the city: not on a monument, but on a bench with a bottle of something and the feeling that you could stay.

Getting around in 72 hours

Do not buy the Paris Pass or the Navigo Découverte unless you are staying a full week. For three days, the Paris Visite pass is overpriced; instead, buy a carnet of ten single tickets (about €17) or use contactless payment directly on the turnstile, which is now enabled on métro, bus and RER. One journey costs €2.15 and is valid for any métro connection within 90 minutes.

Better still: walk. The distance from the Louvre to Notre-Dame is 1.5km; from the Marais to Saint-Germain is 25 minutes on foot along the Seine. Vélib' (the city bike scheme) is excellent if you are comfortable in traffic — a three-day pass is €5 and the electric bikes make the hills of Montmartre painless. Taxis and Ubers are useful only late at night; during the day, the métro will always be faster.

Mistakes to avoid

• Dinner on the Champs-Élysées or in front of Notre-Dame. Both are tourist zones with tourist prices.
• Trying to fit Versailles into a first three-day trip. It eats a whole day, including transit, and you already have too much to see.
• Booking a river cruise on Bateaux Mouches at 8pm. Walk the Seine yourself between Pont des Arts and Pont Alexandre III — it is free and better.
• Staying near the Gare du Nord because it looked convenient on the map. It isn't a nice neighbourhood to come home to at 11pm.
• Assuming everything is open on Sunday. Many restaurants close Sunday and Monday; check before you walk across town.

Which neighbourhood to sleep in

For a first trip of three days, you want to be central, walkable, and residential enough that you get a real Parisian street when you step out of your door. My three recommendations, in order: the Marais (3rd or 4th), Saint-Germain (6th), or the quieter southern end of the 9th around Rue des Martyrs. All three put every monument in this itinerary within a 25-minute walk or two métro stops.

Avoid, for a first visit: the 15th (residential but far), the 19th and 20th (interesting but a haul), and anywhere within 500m of the Gare du Nord or Gare de l'Est. The 1st arrondissement is central but empty at night — nobody actually lives there any more.

Tours & experiences to book

The itinerary above is designed to be walked without a guide, but there are a few experiences worth pre-booking — skip-the-line access to the Louvre, a small-group evening at the Eiffel Tower, or a food-focused walk through the Marais. Here are the ones our guests come back happy from.

Experiences offered via Viator — booking may earn Lavie Maison a commission, at no extra cost to you.

Stay in the neighbourhood: our Paris apartments

Book direct with us — the same homes, up to 10% less than on Airbnb or Booking.

See all our Paris apartments →

Compare with real hotel prices in Paris →

Where to stay in Paris — and why an apartment beats a hotel for 72 hours

Three days is exactly the length of stay where a furnished apartment quietly outperforms a hotel. You arrive from a long-haul flight and you want a kitchen for a first coffee, not a lobby. You come back from Montmartre at midnight with a bottle of wine and a warm baguette — a hotel room has neither glasses nor a table. You are travelling as two, or as four, and one apartment costs less than two hotel rooms while giving you a living room to actually spend time in.

Our Paris apartments are chosen precisely for this itinerary: the Marais, Saint-Germain and the 9th, on residential streets, in buildings with real Parisian bones — parquet, mouldings, tall windows onto a courtyard. Every apartment has fast Wi-Fi, a proper kitchen, linen sheets, and a member of our team five minutes away if anything goes wrong. Check-in is contactless and flexible; check-out is 11am, not 10.

One honest note on pricing: if you like an apartment, book direct with us rather than through Booking or Airbnb. The same apartment is up to 10% less on our site — no OTA commission, no service fee — and you get to talk to the humans who actually manage the flat. That is the whole pitch. No loyalty scheme, no points, just a fairer price and a direct line.

Whether you spend your three days exactly as I've laid them out here or invent your own — walk more, museum less, stop for a second glass — I hope Paris does what it always does, and quietly convinces you to come back for a longer stay.

Frequently asked questions