Paris for first-time visitors
Notre-Dame de Paris is the cathedral on the Île de la Cité that anchors the whole city's map. The earliest of the picks for first-time visitors in Paris opens at 07:00 and the latest closes at 02:00.
Paris for first-timers, in numbers
- Picks on this page
- 24 places across 2 lists, led by Notre-Dame de Paris, Eiffel Tower, Père Lachaise Cemetery
- Posted hours
- 7 picks post hours earliest 07:00, latest 02:00; 3 open by 09:00, 6 past 21:00
Questions first-timers ask about Paris
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Must-see
Sainte-Chapelle on Île de la Cité. Louis IX's 1240s royal chapel replaced its walls with 15 metres of stained glass, floor to vaulted ceiling. On a sunny afternoon the upper room fills with colored light so saturated it tints your skin. Allow twenty minutes. Book a timed slot online.
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Best time to visit
Go in late May, June, or September, when Paris gives you long, mild afternoons for the Seine quays and the Jardin du Luxembourg, café terraces staying full well into the evening. Skip August for the heat and summer closures, and skip January and February for the grey. For a first trip, June edges out September because its evening light lasts longest.
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Airport to city
From Charles de Gaulle (CDG), take the RER B train: roughly €11.80 ($14), 35 minutes to Châtelet-Les Halles, runs 4:50am to midnight. After hours, taxis have a fixed €55 fare to the Right Bank, €62 to the Left Bank: set by prefectural decree, non-negotiable. From Orly, the Orlybus to Denfert-Rochereau runs €11.50, 30 minutes.
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How to get there
Paris has two main airports: Charles de Gaulle (CDG, 25 km northeast) for international flights and Orly (ORY, 14 km south) for European and domestic routes. Direct from the US East Coast runs 7-8 hours at $650-1,100 round-trip on Delta, United, or Air France. From London, the Eurostar train (2h15, £80-200) beats flying.
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Getting around
The Métro does the heavy lifting. Sixteen lines reach every neighborhood worth visiting, and a Navigo Easy card loaded with t+ tickets at €2.15 each keeps you moving without fumbling for cash. Walk between sights in the same arrondissement: Paris is only about 10 km across. Uber works but costs four times the fare.
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Curated for first-timers
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Must-see attractions
Paris does not do small must-sees. This list runs from a cathedral whose history begins in 1163 to a cabaret that has traded on spectacle since 1889, taking in a palace with UNESCO World Heritage Site status, a tower that forms part of another, and a mausoleum for the most distinguished French people. Most of these places are famous enough that visiting them badly is easy: wrong hour, wrong day, half an hour of queueing for a photograph. The point of this list is timing and judgement as much as selection. Several keep late hours worth planning around, a few close on days you might not expect, and one sits outside the city in Versailles. We've written it for a first or second visit, for travellers who want the landmarks without the dutiful box-ticking. Read the hours before you build the day, and give each place the slot it deserves.
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Best restaurants
Paris does not lack for restaurants, and that is precisely the problem. Within a ten-minute walk of the Hôtel de Ville you can eat badly at fifty places and remembered-for-years at a dozen, and the twelve below are the dozen. They cluster across the 75001, 75003, and 75004 postal codes: the streets around Rue des Archives, Rue des Lombards, and Rue Saint-Martin, where the Marais meets Châtelet and the kitchens run late. This is a list for a visitor who has one week, is tired of guessing, and wants to eat like the people who live upstairs. There is Italian cooked by people who mean it, Breton crêpes made to order, a Portuguese counter that never lets its custard cool, Vietnamese from a proper cantine, and a Lebanese kitchen that stays open past 23:00. No stars are chased here; no reservations are impossible. What each of these places has is a specific reason to be at its address: a cuisine done stubbornly well, an hour the neighbourhood keeps, a door that has been open longer than most bistros stay in business.
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