Louvre, Tuileries & Palais-Royal
Monumental Paris: the world's biggest museum, a formal garden running a kilometre west to Concorde, an arcaded 17th-century palace courtyard, and the covered shopping galleries that invented the shopping mall. Grand, slightly airless, and — in the side streets north of the rue Saint-Honoré — quietly the best Japanese eating district in Europe.
Who it's for: First-time visitors, unavoidably. Museum days. Anyone who wants a formal-garden walk from the Louvre to the Obelisk. Serious eaters willing to look past the monuments into the rue Sainte-Anne / rue Villédo grid.
Things to know
- Louvre tickets are timed and, from 1 July to 31 August 2026, reservations are required for everyone. Book the earliest slot you can stand and enter at the Carrousel or Porte des Lions rather than under the pyramid.
- The Louvre closes Tuesdays and opens late (to 9pm) on Wednesday and Friday. The Wednesday and Friday evenings are the best hours of the week to be in the building.
- The Orangerie requires a mandatory timed reservation even at full price, and Friday evenings after 6pm run at a reduced €10 flat rate during parts of the year. Free on the first Sunday of the month with a compulsory booking.
- Do not eat within sight of the Louvre. Walk ten minutes north to the rue Sainte-Anne / rue Villédo grid, which holds the densest concentration of good Japanese restaurants in Europe, or up to the Palais-Royal side streets.
- The Palais-Royal garden and the Buren columns are free, open to anyone, and almost always calmer than anywhere else in the district. The gates do close at night.
- The whole quarter goes quiet after 9pm. It is a place to sightsee and eat early rather than to base an evening in.
- The Tuileries is the connective tissue: it takes 20 minutes to walk from the Louvre pyramid to Place de la Concorde through the garden, and it is the best way to move west without the metro.