You walk in through the main door of the Petit Palais, cross the atrium, come out into the inner garden ringed by the curved peristyle and sit down under the palms. You have just seen Courbet, Rembrandt and a room of Gallé glass, and you have paid nothing. It is not a special day: the permanent collection of eleven museums run by the city of Paris costs nothing, every day they open.
Then there is the rule everyone quotes and almost nobody writes out in full: the first Sunday of the month. The Louvre dropped out of it, the big national monuments only apply it in winter, and more than one list still in circulation names the Centre Pompidou, which has been shut for building works until 2030. I checked every entry against its source again on 30 September 2026, and below you will find only what the museums state on their own pages.
So which museums really do open with no ticket on the first Sunday of the month?
Off we go!
The eleven municipal museums that never charge
The Ville de Paris runs fourteen museums, and in eleven of them the permanent collection is free, for everyone and at any age, with no ticket and no booking: the Petit Palais, the Musée Carnavalet, which tells the history of the city, the Musée d’Art Moderne, the Musée Cernuschi of Asian art, the Musée Cognacq-Jay, the Musée Bourdelle with the sculptor’s studio, the Musée Zadkine, the Maison de Victor Hugo waiting for you on place des Vosges, the Maison de Balzac in Passy, the Musée de la Vie romantique and the Musée de la Libération.
Look at that list carefully, because two of the most beautiful museums in Paris are on it. The Petit Palais has a nineteenth-century painting collection that in any other city would be the main picture gallery, and the Carnavalet fills two Marais mansions with hundreds of rooms. It is the biggest advantage Paris offers anyone travelling without a large budget.
Note: at four of these museums the free admission is suspended while a temporary exhibition is on, and the two provisos do not weigh the same. At the Bourdelle, the Cognacq-Jay and the Zadkine, which are also the smallest, part of the collection stays free during a show, because the display takes over the permanent collection’s rooms as well. At the Maison de Balzac the proviso is the harshest of the four: the museum writes that the permanent collection is free “hors expositions temporaires”, and while an exhibition is on the free admission does not apply at all. If you are going there on purpose, check the day before what is on show.
The three exceptions that still charge
The other three Ville de Paris sites charge a ticket all year round, even for the permanent collection, and it is worth knowing before you turn up at the desk convinced of the opposite: the Palais Galliera, which is the fashion museum, and the Catacombes de Paris. The third is the Crypte archéologique on the Île de la Cité, which right now asks you for nothing, but for a worse reason: it has been closed since 28 June 2026 for conservation work on the archaeological remains, and it will charge again once it reopens.
The Galliera’s case has its own logic, because that museum has no permanent collection on display and lives on exhibitions: whatever you pay is always for a temporary show. The Catacombes are the opposite, a fixed route that is very popular and capped in numbers, and if you want to see it you need to book weeks ahead.
The first Sunday of the month, and why almost everyone gets it wrong
The rule really does exist, but it is not a single one: there is one for national museums and a different one for monuments. The lists you find online blend the two together, promising you entries that are not there.
Start with the national museums, where the first Sunday’s free entry applies all year round. I checked four of them, one by one, on the museum’s own page: the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée du quai Branly, the Musée Delacroix and the Musée Gustave Moreau. Do not stop here, though: the list is not closed, and before giving up on a museum you are interested in, check its own admissions page. Then book a time slot: at the Orsay it is compulsory even when entry is free, while at the quai Branly, the Delacroix and the Moreau it stays recommended. The quai Branly strongly recommends booking, but you can also buy the ticket on the spot, at the desk or from the ticket machines; at the Delacroix and the Moreau I would strongly recommend it myself, because they are two narrow houses and that Sunday’s crowds fill them up.
Then come the Centre des monuments nationaux monuments, where the rule changes shape: the first Sunday is free only from 1 November to 31 March. From April to October you pay as on any other day, and if you have Paris planned for May, this line saves you a disappointment at the ticket desk. It applies to the Panthéon, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Conciergerie and the Arc de Triomphe, with two stated exceptions: the domaine national de Saint-Cloud and the basilica of Saint-Denis stay chargeable on that Sunday too.
The other thing lists get wrong is the Centre Pompidou, which still turns up almost everywhere among the museums free on the first Sunday. The centre has closed for building works running from 2025 to 2030, and its programme is now hosted elsewhere: the Sunday you were promised does not exist, because the door to present yourself at does not exist either.
The first Friday evening at the Louvre
And the Louvre, then, when do you get in without paying?
The Louvre has dropped the first Sunday and moved to the evening: on the first Friday of the month, from 18:00, entry is free for everyone, with no age limit and no residency conditions, except in July and August. The museum’s own pricing page states it, and if you are looking for a second date, the other free day of the year is 14 July.
Keep this change in mind, because it shifts the problem. The free Sunday was a whole day with an enormous crowd; on the Friday evening the museum closes at 21:00, but the Louvre admits its last visitors an hour before that and starts clearing the rooms half an hour before, so you go in between 18:00 and 20:00 and at 20:30 you are walked towards the exit. That is two and a half hours, not three, and you are better off picking two or three rooms and letting the rest go. On how the museum’s entrances and time slots actually work, I have written How to skip the line at the Louvre.
Who gets in free all year, on any day
How old do you need to be to never pay?
Under eighteen, and then free entry has no other conditions: at French national museums and Centre des monuments nationaux monuments, under-18s of any nationality get in free all year round, with a photo ID. Between 18 and 26 the free entry continues, but it asks for citizenship or residency in the European Economic Area, and it holds until the day of your twenty-sixth birthday.
If you fall into either of these two brackets, keep in mind that you already hold almost everything: the Louvre, Orsay, Rodin, quai Branly, Panthéon, Sainte-Chapelle, Conciergerie and the Arc de Triomphe ask you for nothing. It is also why the Paris Museum Pass, sold at a single price with no reduced rate, is almost always money wasted in this case.
Free entry all year, in nearly every venue, also goes to people with disabilities and whoever accompanies them, teachers with the French Pass Education, journalists and anyone receiving unemployment or income support benefits. The exact conditions are published on each museum’s own pricing page: read them before you travel, because they change slightly from one site to another, but they do change.
The free museums that do not look like museums
Outside the municipal network are three sites that charge no ticket and that almost no guide lists among the free museums, because none of the three presents itself as an art museum.
The Musée Curie holds Marie Curie’s real laboratory, with her study and garden, and it is free to visit. The Musée de la Légion d’honneur occupies the hôtel de Salm, opposite the Orsay, and has free entry. And at the Bibliothèque nationale, Richelieu site, the grand oval reading room can be crossed for free, even though the museum proper next to it charges a ticket.
These are three short visits, an hour or so each, and they come in handy between two bigger stops: slot them in between one museum and the next instead of giving them a whole morning.
When the museums are shut: parks, cemeteries and churches
And Monday, when almost every museum is closed?
Monday is the day free Paris stops being a fallback and becomes your best programme. The Père-Lachaise cemetery opens every day and charges nothing: forty-four hectares of tree-lined avenues, nineteenth-century chapels and funerary monuments worth as much as the galleries of a sculpture museum. The Luxembourg Gardens, with the Medici fountain and its bronze Polyphemus, are the drawing room of the left bank, and the Bagatelle rose garden in the Bois de Boulogne is free from early October to the end of March, while from April to September, right in its flowering season, it charges 2.80 euros full price and 1.60 reduced.
Then there are the churches, which in France are publicly owned and can almost always be visited without a ticket: you can fit three into an afternoon and spend nothing. At Notre-Dame, reopened in December 2024, entry is free, and the same goes for the Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre and for five of the seven I lined up in 7 churches to visit in Paris. The other two do charge: the Sainte-Chapelle costs 16 euros for citizens and residents of the European Economic Area and 22 for everyone else, and at Saint-Denis you pay to visit the royal necropolis, 17 euros.
Note: free does not mean no queue. At Notre-Dame entry is free but the line exists, and it shortens if you book the time slot online, which is also free.
Practical information
Details checked on 30 September 2026 on the official pages of Paris Musées, the Louvre, the Centre des monuments nationaux, the musée Gustave Moreau, the musée Delacroix, the musée du quai Branly and the musée d’Orsay’s ticket office. Prices and opening hours change: check again before you travel.
Tickets. The permanent collection of the eleven municipal museums costs nothing and needs no ticket, while temporary exhibitions at the same sites are charged separately. Closures. The Crypte archéologique on the Île de la Cité has been closed since 28 June 2026 for conservation work, and the Centre Pompidou remains closed for building works running from 2025 to 2030. Opening hours. Paris Musées venues open from Tuesday to Sunday, most from 10:00 to 18:00, and stay closed on Mondays and the main public holidays. First Sunday of the month. The musée d’Orsay, the musée du quai Branly, the musée Delacroix and the musée Gustave Moreau are free all year, and these four are the ones I checked: the list is not exhaustive, and other national museums apply the same rule, so check the pricing page of the museum you are interested in. Centre des monuments nationaux monuments are free only from 1 November to 31 March, and Saint-Cloud and the basilica of Saint-Denis stay excluded. Louvre. The museum opens free to everyone on the first Friday of the month from 18:00, except in July and August, and on 14 July. Free admission. Under-18s of any nationality, citizens and residents of the European Economic Area under 26, and people with disabilities and whoever accompanies them enter free all year. Booking. At the Orsay the time slot must be booked even when entry is free, while at the quai Branly, the Delacroix and the Gustave Moreau booking remains recommended, not compulsory. How much time it needs. A day is enough for two municipal museums and a park, while the first Sunday of the month is only enough for one museum, because the queue and the crowd inside the rooms double the time it takes.
How to line them up
If you have two days, the programme that pays off best does not start with the free Sunday: it starts with any ordinary weekday except Monday, with two municipal museums and a garden. The free Sunday is only worth it if you want to see the Orsay or the quai Branly, in which case book the time slot the moment the ticket office opens it.
The rest of the practical information for a trip to Paris, paid tickets included, is in Paris Museum Pass, which is only worth buying once you have taken out of the sum everything you have just read here.
Photographs: Petit Palais by Moonik, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons; Medici fountain by Le plombier du désert, CC BY-SA 4.0; Père-Lachaise by Tylwyth Eldar, CC BY-SA 4.0.
