Paris 7 Day Itinerary (No Tourist Traps)

Seven days is enough to cover Paris properly without ever leaving the city limits: Notre-Dame through the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, Eiffel Tower and Catacombs all timed and booked in the right order. Drop back to our 6-day version if a day falls through, or see the shorter 2-day through 5-day versions for a tighter trip.

Book these before you go:

Day Focus
1 Notre-Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, Latin Quarter
2 The Louvre, Tuileries, Palais-Royal
3 Eiffel Tower, Seine cruise, Trocadero
4 Montmartre, Sacre-Coeur
5 Musee d’Orsay, Saint-Germain-des-Pres
6 Le Marais, the Catacombs
7 Arc de Triomphe, Grands Boulevards

Day 1: Notre-Dame, Sainte-Chapelle and the Latin Quarter

Land at CDG or Orly and take the train, not a taxi, unless you’re wiped out or hauling serious luggage. RER B runs from CDG to central Paris in about 34 minutes for a flat EUR14; Orly connects via Metro Line 14 direct, both covered by the same airport ticket, no paper option exists anymore. Drop bags in the Marais, Latin Quarter or Saint-Germain, all keep you within walking distance of today’s sights.

Notre-Dame’s nave is free and needs no ticket at all, worth repeating because plenty of older advice still has it closed. The cathedral reopened in December 2024 after the fire, and a free timed slot exists purely to skip a second queue, bookable only 72 hours out, not weeks ahead; without one, expect roughly 20 minutes waiting in shoulder season.

Do you need to book Notre-Dame ahead of time? No, not to get in. The nave is free walk-up entry with no ticket required at all; the optional 72-hour timed slot only shortens the queue, it doesn’t gate entry the way the Louvre or Sainte-Chapelle do. Save the booking stress for the sights that actually require it.

Ten minutes west, Sainte-Chapelle is the opposite case: a mandatory 30-minute timed slot, EUR16 for EEA residents and EUR22 for everyone else, and a 10am booking that expires by 10:30 if you’re late. The stained glass, 15 windows and 600 square metres of it, is worth planning around; go on a sunny morning if the forecast allows it. Book through tickets.monuments-nationaux.fr rather than a reseller markup.

Lunch in the Latin Quarter around Rue Mouffetard, then spend the afternoon on Ile Saint-Louis for Berthillon ice cream and the quieter, genuinely residential streets the rest of central Paris doesn’t have. Dinner at a bistro off the main strip near Notre-Dame; the restaurants directly facing the cathedral charge more for the same steak-frites you’ll get two streets back.

Day 2: The Louvre, timed slot only

The Louvre is not a walk-up museum in 2026. Every ticket comes with a mandatory 30-minute entry window, EUR22 for EEA residents and EUR32 for everyone else, and the museum is closed every Tuesday, a detail that wrecks more first-timers’ schedules than any other single fact in this guide. From July through August 2026, the timed slot is mandatory for every visitor, no exceptions beyond a short passholder list. Check current tickets and hours on louvre.fr rather than a markup reseller.

Can you see the Louvre properly in a single morning? Not the whole museum, and don’t try. Pick the Mona Lisa and Denon wing circuit plus one collection you actually care about, then leave before your feet and the crowds both win. The building holds decades of a full visit; a morning gets you the highlights done right, not the whole thing done badly.

Walk out through the Tuileries Garden toward Place de la Concorde, then loop back through the Palais-Royal’s arcaded courtyard and its striped Buren columns, a genuinely quiet break most itineraries skip entirely. Lunch near the Palais-Royal rather than the tourist-menu strip directly outside the Pyramid. Dinner options cluster around the 1st and 2nd arrondissements; save the splurge restaurants for later in the trip.

Day 3: Eiffel Tower and the Seine by boat

Book the Eiffel Tower online regardless of which access level you want; every ticket is timed, and slots open up to 60 days ahead. Second floor by lift runs EUR23.50, the summit EUR36.70, and summit slots sell out first in season, especially anything near sunset. Stairs to the second floor alone are the budget option at EUR14.80, though reservation requirements are being extended to stair tickets too later in 2026, so check toureiffel.paris before assuming a walk-up is still possible.

Take the Bateaux Parisiens cruise from Port de la Bourdonnais in the afternoon, about EUR19 for an hour past Notre-Dame and the Louvre from river level; no booking urgency compares to the tower itself, so this is the one sight on this trip you can genuinely decide same-day. Finish at Trocadero for the classic tower-across-the-river photo as the light show starts on the hour after dark.

Is the summit worth the extra cost over the second floor? Only if the view itself is the point of the day. The second floor at EUR23.50 already delivers the skyline; the summit adds height and roughly EUR13 more per person for a view that reads similarly in most photos. Budget travelers should stop at the second floor without regret.

Day 4: Montmartre, on foot and early

Go to Sacre-Coeur before 10am if the bracelet scam is something you’d rather skip entirely: crews work the steps up from the Metro all day, grabbing a wrist to tie a string bracelet before you can refuse, then demanding payment and not letting go. Say non and keep walking; don’t engage, and the same posture covers the gold-ring trick found near most major monuments citywide.

The basilica itself is free. The dome climb is a separate on-site-only ticket, no advance booking exists for it, and it’s worth the stair count for the rooftop view over the whole city. Place du Tertre, just below, is worth a five-minute walk-through for the portrait artists and the atmosphere, not a sit-down meal; the terrace restaurants facing the square are priced for the captive audience they get, not the food they serve.

Lunch and dinner both go better a few streets off the main tourist drag. Clos Montmartre, the city’s oldest working vineyard, sits a genuinely quiet five-minute detour from the crowds most visitors never bother finding.

Day 5: Musee d’Orsay and Saint-Germain

Musee d’Orsay is smaller and easier to finish in a morning than the Louvre, EUR16 standard or EUR12 for the Thursday evening slot after 6pm, closed Mondays. The old Beaux-Arts train station’s top-floor terrace clock is one of the better free photo spots in the city, worth the stop even if Impressionist painting isn’t the draw for you. Check current hours on musee-orsay.fr before you plan the morning around it.

Is the Musee d’Orsay worth it if you’ve already done the Louvre? Yes, and for a different reason: it’s a fraction of the size, walkable in two to three hours instead of a full day, and the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection genuinely rivals anything in the bigger museum. Treat the two as complements, not a choice between them.

Spend the afternoon in Saint-Germain-des-Pres: the Romanesque abbey church is one of the oldest in Paris, and the surrounding streets hold independent bookshops and cafes that reward a slow wander rather than a checklist. Luxembourg Gardens, a short walk south, is free and a good place to sit down after several days of heavy walking.

Day 6: Le Marais and the Catacombs

Book the Catacombs before you plan anything else about this day. Tickets release exactly 7 days ahead at 10am Paris time on catacombes.paris.fr , and there is no walk-up purchase at all; the EUR31 adult ticket sells out routinely in summer. Set a reminder for the release window a week out; this is the single most-missed booking in this whole trip because it doesn’t work like every other timed ticket that opens weeks in advance.

Spend the morning in Le Marais instead, one of the few Paris neighborhoods where shops commonly stay open Sundays: Place des Vosges, the Jewish quarter around Rue des Rosiers, and the boutique streets of the 3rd and 4th arrondissements. Centre Pompidou sits at the Marais’s edge if modern art is on your list.

Is the Catacombs tour worth the advance-booking hassle? Yes, precisely because most visitors don’t bother planning around the 7-day release window and simply never get in. It’s roughly an hour underground through several hundred years of Parisian remains, genuinely unlike anything else in the city, and the booking friction is exactly why it doesn’t feel overrun once you’re inside.

Day 7: Arc de Triomphe and the Grands Boulevards

The Arc de Triomphe runs EUR22 in high season (April-September) and EUR16 low season, with EU visitors under 26 free; climb the roof terrace for a Champs-Elysees view without the Eiffel Tower’s booking pressure. Walk the avenue itself for the scale of it, then eat somewhere off it entirely: the cafes and chains directly on the Champs-Elysees are priced for footfall, not quality, the single most repeated tourist-trap warning about this street for good reason.

Palais Garnier, the 19th-century opera house that partly inspired The Phantom of the Opera, runs self-guided tours most days when no matinee is scheduled; check the calendar on operadeparis.fr before you go since rehearsals close it without much notice. The Grands Boulevards nearby are the better shopping alternative to the Champs-Elysees markup.

Use whatever’s left of the day for the thing you didn’t get to rather than cramming in something new: a bakery, a bookshop, a last coffee somewhere you liked on day one.

Before you go

Skip the paper carnet; it stopped being sold entirely after 31 December 2025. Load a Navigo Easy card (EUR2 one-time) instead, and use it for the flat EUR2.55 Metro/RER fare or EUR2.05 for bus and tram, regardless of how many zones you cross. Check current fares and line disruptions on Ile-de-France Mobilites before you travel. Say Bonjour before anything else in any shop, cafe or ticket window; skipping straight to English or a request reads as rude no matter how good your French actually is, and most central Paris staff switch to workable English gladly once you’ve opened properly.

Should you add a day trip to this itinerary? Only if you have a spare day beyond this one; Versailles alone needs a genuine half-day plus mandatory timed entry even for free-admission visitors. This itinerary deliberately stays inside the city; see our Paris, France gateway guide and its own 7-day itinerary if Versailles, Giverny or Disneyland Paris fit your dates.