What's happening in Paris this week?

Two closure days wreck most first-timer plans in Paris: the Musée d'Orsay and the Palace of Versailles shut on Mondays, and the Louvre and the Musée de l'Orangerie shut on Tuesdays. Put Versailles or Orsay on Tuesday and the Louvre on Wednesday or Friday, when it stays open until 9pm. Keep Monday for the sights that run seven days a week, such as Notre-Dame de Paris, the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre. The Louvre's evening sessions are the quietest hours of its week: by 7pm the crowd in front of the Mona Lisa in the Denon wing thins to a few rows, and the stone galleries feel cooler and echo more. Orsay has its own late night on Thursday, until 9:45pm. Skip the Champs-Élysées as a destination. It is a 2 km avenue of chain stores, and the only reason to walk it is the Arc de Triomphe roof at the far end.

Two more patterns sit on top of the closure days: French school holidays put Paris families in the museums alongside the tourists, so on those weeks get to Versailles for the 9am opening and visit the palace before the gardens. The first Sunday of the month is free at the Musée d'Orsay, and the queue on the Rue de la Légion d'Honneur side can run past an hour, so pay for a timed ticket on another day instead. Paris drizzle rarely lasts long, but it leaves the cobbles in the Marais slick and cold underfoot. Bring a packable rain jacket instead of an umbrella, because umbrellas jam the narrow pavements of Rue des Rosiers.

Paris eats on a fixed clock. Lunch kitchens open at noon and most stop serving around 2:30pm, dinner starts at 7:30pm, and a bistro near the Louvre that seats you at 6:30pm is usually a tourist trap. Sunday is the day that catches first-timers out: most shops outside the Marais and the Champs-Élysées close, and many family-run bistros in the 11e close on both Sunday and Monday. Sunday morning belongs to the markets. The Marché Bastille on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir runs Thursday and Sunday until early afternoon, and you can smell the roast chickens on the rotisserie stalls from a block away, while the Marché d'Aligre in the 12e opens every morning except Monday and is the cheaper of the two. In the cold months, chestnut sellers light braziers outside the Saint-Michel and Châtelet metro exits, and a paper cone of marrons chauds costs a few euros, hot enough to sting your fingers through the paper.

If you land at Charles de Gaulle on a morning flight, keep day one outdoors and free of bookings: take the RER B to Saint-Michel Notre-Dame and walk across the Île de la Cité. Notre-Dame reopened in 2024 after the 2019 fire and costs nothing to enter, though the line moves faster before 10am. Afterwards, sit down at a café on Place Dauphine; a café crème at a zinc counter costs around €4 to €5, roughly $4.50 to $5.60 at this week's rate, and a table usually costs more than standing at the bar. Save the Eiffel Tower for your second evening. Its lights sparkle for five minutes on the hour after dark, so check the sunset time for your dates and you might catch the first show before dinner.