3 Days in Paris: The Essential First-Timer's Itinerary

Three days will not exhaust Paris. Nobody's three days ever have. But three days is enough to stand under the glass pyramid at the Louvre, eat a still-warm baguette on the grass beneath the Eiffel Tower, and watch the lights come up along the Seine, and that is a very good Paris. The trick for a first visit is to build each day around one part of the city, so you spend your hours looking at things instead of riding the metro across town. Here is a walkable, tested three-day plan, with the timing and ticket details that keep you out of the longest queues.

How to use this Paris itinerary

This plan groups each day geographically, so you are mostly on foot with short metro hops in between. Two ideas do the heavy lifting: book the big sights ahead, and start early.

• Reserve timed-entry tickets online. The Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, and the Eiffel Tower all sell dated, timed slots, and the popular ones vanish days in advance. Book them the moment your dates are firm.
• Mornings are your secret weapon. The Louvre at opening is calm; by noon it is a scrum. The same goes for Sacré-Cœur and the Montmartre lanes.
• Get a Navigo Easy card at any metro station and load it with single t+ tickets or a day pass. One ride is about 2.15 euro, and the old paper tickets are being retired.
• Wear real shoes. Paris is a walking city, and cobbles plus museum floors add up fast.

Want this as a living plan you can edit and carry? Start from the ready-made Paris plan on Travolp, or open the full day-by-day trip to see every stop mapped.

Day 1: The Louvre and the Tuileries

Day one is a straight line along the Right Bank: the world's most-visited museum, a royal garden, and the Impressionists across the river. It is a lot of art, so pace the coffee.

Morning: the Louvre

The Louvre opens at 9am and closes on Tuesdays. Book a timed slot at louvre.fr and pick the earliest one. The famous glass-pyramid entrance has the longest queue, so use the quieter Carrousel du Louvre entrance at 99 Rue de Rivoli (the underground mall access from the metro) to get in faster.

Do not try to see everything. Aim for a handful of icons and wander between them:

• Go straight to the Mona Lisa (La Joconde) in the Denon wing at opening, before the crowd builds, then double back.
• The Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace are both nearby in the same wing.
• The Napoleon III Apartments are wildly over-the-top and often nearly empty.

Two hours is a realistic first visit. You could spend a week here; you will not.

Afternoon: the Tuileries Garden

Walk out the west end into the Tuileries Garden, the formal green ribbon that runs from the Louvre to Place de la Concorde. It is free, and the whole point is to slow down. Pull one of the green metal chairs up to a round fountain and grab a crepe or a coffee from a kiosk. In summer a small fair sets up along the north side, big wheel included.

Late afternoon: the Musée d'Orsay

Cross the Seine to the Musée d'Orsay, set inside a gorgeous former railway station. If the Louvre is antiquity, the Orsay is the party that came after: Monet, Renoir, Degas's dancers, and a whole room of Van Gogh. Do not miss the view out through the giant station clock on the top floor. It stays open late on Thursdays (until 9:45pm) and closes Mondays, so a Thursday visit buys you an unhurried evening with the Impressionists.

Day 2: The Eiffel Tower and the river

Morning: the Eiffel Tower

Book the Eiffel Tower well ahead at toureiffel.paris; summit tickets go first. You have two ways up: the lift, or the stairs to the second floor (cheaper, and the stair queue is usually far shorter). For the classic head-on photo, cross to the Trocadéro terrace on the far side of the river before you go up.

If tickets are sold out, you still win by just standing under it. The tower is free to look at, and enormous, and there is a reason people go quiet the first time they see it up close.

Midday: a Champ de Mars picnic

The Champ de Mars is the long lawn stretching south from the tower's feet, and a picnic here is one of the great cheap pleasures in Paris. Assemble it on the way: duck into a boulangerie for a baguette, then the nearby Rue Cler market street for cheese, saucisson, fruit, and a bottle. Spread out on the grass with the tower filling the sky. (Wine on the lawn is fine; just be tidy and low-key.) Come back after dark and the tower sparkles for five minutes at the top of every hour.

Evening: a walk along the Seine

As the light goes gold, follow the river east on foot. You will pass the Pont Alexandre III, the gilded, lamp-lined bridge that is arguably the prettiest in the city, and reach Île de la Cité and Notre-Dame, reopened in December 2024 after its long restoration from the fire. If your feet are done, a one-hour Seine river cruise (Bateaux-Mouches, or the Vedettes du Pont-Neuf) at dusk is the lazy, lovely version of the same walk.

Day 3: Montmartre and the Marais

Morning: Sacré-Cœur and the Montmartre lanes

Start on the Butte Montmartre, the hill crowned by the white domes of the Sacré-Cœur basilica. Entry is free, and the view from the steps out over the whole city is the best free panorama in Paris; climbing the dome (small fee) goes one better. Go early, both to beat the crowds and to skip the friendship-bracelet hustlers who work the steps once it fills up. The funicular up the hill takes a normal metro ticket if you would rather not climb.

Then get lost in the lanes behind the basilica, which is the real magic of Montmartre:

• Place du Tertre, the painters' square, tourist-heavy but fun for a quick portrait.
• Rue de l'Abreuvoir and the pink La Maison Rose, the most photographed corner up here.
• The tiny Clos Montmartre vineyard and the surviving windmill at Moulin de la Galette.
• Coffee at Café des Deux Moulins, the real café from Amélie.

Skip the restaurants right on Place du Tertre and eat a street or two down.

Evening: dinner in Le Marais

Head across town to Le Marais, the tangle of medieval streets that is now Paris's most walkable dinner district. Wander Place des Vosges, the oldest planned square in the city, arcaded and symmetrical and shady. For a cheap, legendary bite, the falafel on Rue des Rosiers (L'As du Fallafel is the famous one) is worth the queue. For a sit-down meal, the Marais is thick with small bistros and natural-wine bars, so book ahead at weekends. It is the right way to spend a last Paris night: a good table, no rush, and a walk home along lit streets.

Practical Paris tips that save the day

• Consider a Paris Museum Pass if you are hitting several sights; it covers the Louvre and the Orsay and skips the ticket queue. Note that you still need a free timed reservation for the Louvre on top of the pass.
• Watch your pockets on the metro (line 1 especially), around the Eiffel Tower, and on the Sacré-Cœur steps. These are prime pickpocket spots, so keep your phone and wallet zipped and in front. A wallet can vanish in seconds, as one traveller learned the hard way in Lisbon.
• Time the icons for early or late. The same crowd-smart timing that works all over Europe (see beat the crowds in summer) works here: first entry or last entry, never midday.
• Mind the closing days. The Louvre closes Tuesdays and the Orsay closes Mondays, so check before you lock in the order of your days.
• Learn three words. A bonjour on the way in and merci, au revoir on the way out genuinely changes how you are treated.

Make this Paris plan your own

Three days, three neighbourhoods, early starts: that is the shape of a great first Paris. But the best version of this trip is the one bent to fit you, more food and fewer museums, a slower pace with kids, an extra day out at Versailles.

That is what a travel companion is for. With Travolp you can take this Paris plan, tell it your taste, and reshape it just by chatting, then carry it on the trip with offline maps that keep working when the signal does not. Open the full day-by-day Paris trip, start from the ready-made Paris plan, or browse more first-timer itineraries for your next city. If you liked this format, our 3 days in Kyoto guide follows the same crowd-smart rhythm.