What to Do in Paris: Plans for 1, 2, 3, 5 Days or a Week

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Most Paris guides answer the wrong question. They list monuments as if you had unlimited time, unlimited legs and unlimited attention span for gilded ceilings. You don't. The useful question is how many days do I actually have — and what am I willing to skip so the rest breathes. This guide is organised that way: one honest plan per trip length, with the trade-offs stated out loud.

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How to use this guide

Paris rewards depth over breadth. A traveller who spends two unhurried hours in the Marais will remember more than one who ticks off six neighbourhoods in a day and photographs none of them properly. The plans below are built around that principle: fewer stops, better sequencing, honest walking distances. Each itinerary assumes you're staying somewhere central — roughly within the first eight arrondissements or the near-Left-Bank — because a forty-minute commute back to a peripheral hotel every evening quietly ruins a Paris trip.

One practical note before we start. Paris has a weekly rhythm most guides forget to mention: the Louvre closes on Tuesday, the Musée d'Orsay on Monday, many smaller museums on Monday or Tuesday, and quite a few restaurants shut Sunday and Monday. Every plan below is written for a generic weekday, but if your trip lands on a Monday or Tuesday, swap sections rather than force the door of a closed museum. And whatever the length, book timed entries for the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Sainte-Chapelle and the Catacombes at least a week ahead — the queue you save is the hour you gain.

What to do in Paris in 1 day

One day in Paris is a compromise, and the honest move is to accept that. You will not "see Paris" in a day. You will see one axis of it well, and that is genuinely worth doing. The plan I'd follow: start early on the Île de la Cité with Notre-Dame from the parvis and Sainte-Chapelle inside (arrive at opening, 9am, timed ticket in hand), cross to the Left Bank for a coffee on rue de Buci, walk through Saint-Germain-des-Prés to the Musée d'Orsay for a focused ninety minutes — Impressionist floor only, don't try to do the whole building.

After Orsay, cross the Seine at the Passerelle Solférino, walk the Tuileries, and finish the afternoon on the Champs-Élysées up to the Arc de Triomphe. Climb it if the light is good — the view is better than the Eiffel Tower's precisely because the Eiffel Tower is in it. End the day at Trocadéro at sunset, where the tower reveals itself across the Seine, and have dinner in the 7th around rue Cler. What you're sacrificing: Montmartre, the Marais, the Louvre, Versailles, any museum other than Orsay. That's the deal. Trying to add Montmartre to this day is how people end up exhausted and remembering nothing.

One day, one axis. Cité → Orsay → Tuileries → Étoile → Trocadéro. Everything else waits for the next trip.

2 days in Paris

Two days is where Paris starts to feel real. Keep day one as above — it's a strong spine — and give day two entirely to the Right Bank's older half. Begin at the Louvre when it opens (Wednesday to Monday), and be disciplined: pick two wings, not four. The Denon wing for Italian painting and the Sully wing for the Egyptian collection is a good pairing; two hours, out by noon, before the crowd density becomes unpleasant.

Walk east through the Palais-Royal gardens and the covered passages — Galerie Vivienne, Passage des Panoramas — for lunch in the 2nd. Spend the afternoon in the Marais on foot: Place des Vosges, the small streets around rue des Rosiers and rue de Sévigné, Musée Picasso or Musée Carnavalet if a museum still appeals, otherwise just the shopfronts and courtyards. Aperitif around République or Canal Saint-Martin, dinner in the 11th. This second day is deliberately slower and more neighbourhood-driven — it balances the monument-heavy day one, and it's what turns a Paris trip from a checklist into a memory.

3 days in Paris

With three days, the sensible addition isn't more museums — it's Montmartre and a proper evening. Keep days one and two, then give day three to the north. Go up to Montmartre early, before 10am, when the streets around rue des Abbesses and rue Lepic still belong to the people who live there. Sacré-Cœur is fine but the real pleasure is the walk: rue de l'Abreuvoir, place Dalida, the vineyard, the quiet side of the butte facing north. Come down through Pigalle, not the funicular, and have lunch in South Pigalle (SoPi) around rue des Martyrs — one of the best food streets in Paris and almost entirely local.

Afternoon: choose one of two moods. Either the Musée Rodin and its garden in the 7th (small, human-scale, my personal recommendation for a third day) or the Centre Pompidou for modern art and the rooftop view over the zinc rooftops. Evening: this is the night to book somewhere properly — a bistro in the 9th or 10th, or a wine bar in the 11th. Three days is also the minimum for a first Seine walk after dark: from Pont Neuf to Pont Alexandre III on foot, tower sparkling on the hour. Skip the dinner cruise; walk the same water for free.

5 days in Paris

Five days is the length at which Paris stops being a trip and starts being a stay. You now have room for two things the shorter plans have to cut: a proper day trip and a full day of doing very little. Days one to three as above. Day four: Versailles, but do it right. Leave the apartment by 8:30, RER C to Versailles Château Rive Gauche, be at the gates for opening, palace first, then the gardens and the Trianon estate in the afternoon. Bring a picnic — the on-site food is what you'd expect. Back in Paris by early evening, dinner somewhere unambitious near where you sleep.

Day five is the one most itineraries get wrong by cramming. Do the opposite. Pick one neighbourhood you liked and go back to it. Sit in a café for an hour with a book. Visit one small museum — the Musée de la Vie Romantique, the Musée Bourdelle, the Musée Nissim de Camondo — the ones no one queues for and that stay with you. A long lunch. A late-afternoon walk along the Coulée Verte or the Canal Saint-Martin. This is the day that separates people who visited Paris from people who spent time in it. Don't fill it.

• Day 4 alternative to Versailles: Giverny (Monet's garden, April–October) or Chartres cathedral by train.
• Day 5 rule: no more than one scheduled thing. Everything else is drift.

A full week in Paris

A week changes the maths entirely. You can stop optimising and start living. Take the five-day plan and add two things. First, a second day trip if the weather cooperates — Fontainebleau for the château and the forest, or Reims for champagne houses (1h by TGV), or a slow day in Chantilly for the château and the Musée Condé's paintings. Second, a genuinely local evening: a jazz club in the 5th, a concert at Philharmonie de Paris in the 19th, a film at a proper old cinema like Le Grand Rex or Le Champo.

With seven days you can also afford one "themed" day built around something you actually care about. Design and decorative arts: Musée des Arts Décoratifs, then the Marais galleries, then a dinner at a modern bistro. Food: a morning at the Marché d'Aligre, a Poilâne detour, an afternoon pastry crawl in the 6th, dinner at a natural wine place. Books: Shakespeare and Company, the bouquinistes, the Bibliothèque Mazarine, the Latin Quarter's older bookshops. Paris rewards specificity — a week is when you finally have room for yours.

What changes with the season

The plans above hold across the year, but the texture shifts month by month. Spring (April–June) is when the terraces reopen properly and the parks earn their reputation; expect crowds around the major sights and book everything ahead. Summer, especially August, is quieter than people expect — many Parisians leave, small restaurants close for two or three weeks, and you get a strangely empty city with a hotter climate. Autumn (September–October) is arguably the best light of the year and the best restaurant month, as the rentrée brings menus back to full form. Winter is underrated: short days, but low queues, warm brasseries, museums to yourself in mid-January, and Christmas markets from late November.

If you know your dates already, our month-by-month Paris pages go deeper on what's actually open, what's on, and how to dress. The events calendar you'll see there is tied to real dates — check it once you've picked yours and adjust the plan above accordingly (a rainy Tuesday in February and a bright Saturday in June are not the same trip, and shouldn't be planned the same way).

Planning mistakes to avoid

Four mistakes account for most of the disappointment we hear from first-time visitors. The first is underestimating transit time. Paris looks small on a map and isn't; a metro change plus walk from the Marais to the Eiffel Tower is a real forty minutes, not the ten your phone shows. Build in buffer, or better, cluster your day geographically so you're not zig-zagging. The second is stacking museums. Two serious museums in a day is the ceiling for most people — a third turns into wallpaper. Alternate a museum morning with a neighbourhood afternoon.

The third is ignoring the closing-day map. Louvre closed Tuesday; Orsay, Rodin, Picasso, Pompidou closed Monday; Versailles closed Monday. If your trip is short, print this on a napkin. The fourth is queueing when you didn't have to. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Sainte-Chapelle, the Catacombes, Versailles and the Arc de Triomphe all sell timed tickets online — using them turns a ninety-minute queue into a five-minute walk-up. It costs nothing extra and it is, quietly, the single biggest quality-of-life upgrade you can give a Paris trip.

• Cluster by neighbourhood, not by monument fame.
• Two museums max per day.
• Check the closing day before you leave the apartment.
• Book timed entries a week ahead for anything major.

Plan around your dates

What's on in Paris while you're there

Enter your dates and we'll show you what falls during your stay.

Arrival Departure See what's on

Tours & experiences to book

A short list of things worth pre-booking — skip-the-line access at the big sights, plus a few smaller experiences (food walks, evening cruises, day trips to Versailles) that consistently save time or add something you couldn't easily arrange yourself.

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Where to stay: why an apartment beats a hotel in Paris

Every plan above assumes you're centrally based and can walk home for a nap, drop shopping, or change before dinner. That's easy in an apartment and awkward in a hotel room the size of the bed. Paris is a city of neighbourhoods, and the trip changes character entirely depending on which one is yours for the week — the 6th for classic Left Bank mornings, the Marais for evening life, the 9th for food, the 7th for calm and proximity to the tower. Living in one of them, even for three days, is a different experience from visiting them.

Our Paris apartments sit in exactly these neighbourhoods, chosen for the walk-home test as much as the design. A real kitchen for the morning coffee and the market haul from rue Cler or rue des Martyrs. A washing machine that saves the mid-trip laundry panic. Space for two couples or a family to actually coexist. And prices that, when you book direct with us rather than through an OTA, run up to 10% less for the same nights — because we're not paying a middleman a commission we'd have to pass on to you.

Pick your dates, check the month page for what's on, and take the apartment that fits the neighbourhood you want to wake up in. The plans in this guide will feel very different lived from a home than from a hotel lobby — and that, honestly, is most of what people mean when they say they fell in love with Paris.

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