Paris has six big stations, and each one faces a different direction: you reach the Palace of Versailles from a stop along the Seine, Monet’s house at Giverny from a platform that looks out toward Normandy, and the basilica where the kings of France rest doesn’t even ask for a regional ticket, because it lies inside the metro network. So the first hurdle of a day trip out of Paris isn’t the train: it’s working out which station you need.
The good news is that, apart from the direct OUIGO to Chartres, you don’t reserve a seat for these trips: you board the first regional train in your time window, as you would on a RER or the metro, and sit wherever you find room.
In this article you’ll find the stations and networks that really matter, how tickets are bought today, and a direct link to the article on each of the six destinations, where the hours, the prices and what to see once you step off the train are covered.
Which Paris station does the train you really need leave from?
Let’s go!
The networks in play: RER, Transilien, TER and TGV
Behind the names RER, Transilien, TER and TGV there aren’t four different companies, but four levels of one railway service. The RER, the Réseau Express Régional, runs under Paris along five lines, A to E, and connects the city to the first ring of suburbs; lines A and B are operated jointly by RATP and SNCF, the other three, including the C that goes to Versailles, by SNCF alone. The Transilien is the next level down: SNCF regional trains, each with its own letter, J, L, N, P and the rest, which stay within the Île-de-France but run on tracks separate from those of the urban network. The TER is the same kind of train, but run region by region outside the Île-de-France: the one for Chartres is a TER Centre-Val de Loire, the one for Soissons a TER Hauts-de-France. At the top of the ladder come Intercités, TGV and OUIGO, the long-distance trains: for the six trips in this article you need only one exception, the direct OUIGO to Chartres.
Each station looks toward a different part of the country. Gare du Nord sends trains to the north of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, plus the Eurostar to London: the TER for Soissons leaves from here too. Gare de l’Est covers the east, toward Champagne, Alsace and Germany, and the Transilien for Provins leaves from here. Gare Saint-Lazare faces Normandy and is the station for the train to Vernon, the nearest stop to Giverny. Gare Montparnasse covers the west and south-west, Brittany and Bordeaux, and the train to Chartres leaves from here as well. Gare de Lyon and Gare d’Austerlitz, finally, face south: the first toward Dijon, Lyon and Marseille, the second toward the Loire Valley and Toulouse. You don’t need either of them for any of the six trips in this article, except Austerlitz for the direct OUIGO to Chartres, but they’re the two stations to remember if you stretch your journey beyond the Île-de-France.
Versailles is a case apart, because the RER C doesn’t have a single departure station in Paris: the line runs along the Seine with stops like Invalides and Saint-Michel Notre-Dame, so you board at the RER C stop nearest to where you are, not necessarily at one of the six big stations.
The five trips that need a real train
Which station do you need, destination by destination?
For Versailles, take the RER C to the terminus at Versailles Château Rive Gauche, ten minutes’ walk from the Palace; if it’s crowded, a Transilien train from Gare Montparnasse or Gare Saint-Lazare still leaves you less than twenty minutes’ walk from the entrance. The rest, from tickets to the time you’ll need for the gardens, is in the article on the Palace of Versailles.
For Giverny, the train alone isn’t enough, because the village has no station of its own: from Gare Saint-Lazare take the train to Vernon-Giverny, between three quarters of an hour and an hour, and from there a shuttle of another fifteen to the gate of the Fondation Monet. Shuttle times and price are in Giverny, Monet’s house and garden. If you’d rather not think about trains and shuttles, there is also the half-day coach trip to Giverny from Paris, with a guide and entry to the house and garden included.
For Chartres, leave from Gare Montparnasse: the journey takes between an hour and an hour and a quarter, on a Centre-Val de Loire TER, and no RER goes that far. The direct OUIGO, though, leaves from Gare d’Austerlitz and takes about an hour and a half. The stained glass, the labyrinth and the Treasury are in the article on Chartres Cathedral.
For Provins, board the Transilien line P at Gare de l’Est: the journey takes about an hour and twenty minutes, and it’s the longest of the regional-train trips even though it stays inside the Île-de-France. The towers and the underground passages of the medieval town are described in Provins.
For Soissons, the TER Hauts-de-France leaves from Gare du Nord and takes a little over an hour, with a train roughly every hour. What is left of the Abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes is covered in What to see outside Paris: Soissons.
Saint-Denis, the only destination inside the urban network
Why isn’t Saint-Denis among the five trips above?
Because it doesn’t need a real train: the basilica where the kings of France are buried lies inside Paris’s urban network, not outside it. Get off at the Basilique de Saint-Denis stop on metro line 13, or take the RER D to Saint-Denis, or to the stop nearest the stadium, Stade de France - Saint-Denis: either way you use the same ticket, or the same Navigo, that you use to get around the city, with no separate ticket office to go through. What you find inside, from the royal tombs to the work on the north spire, I tell in The Basilica of Saint-Denis. For the royal necropolis, though, a metro ticket won’t do: you can buy an entry ticket to the Basilica of Saint-Denis in advance.
How to buy your ticket, and whether you need to reserve a seat
When you buy a ticket for these trips, do you have to reserve a seat like at the cinema?
It depends on the train. On the Transilien and TER trains, the ones for Giverny, Chartres, Provins and Soissons, you don’t pick a seat: you board the first train in your time window and sit wherever you find room, as on a RER or the metro. The exception is the direct OUIGO to Chartres, a long-distance train: there the system assigns your seat when you buy, and you don’t have to choose anything.
To buy, the most convenient way is still the app or the website SNCF Connect, where you pick the departure station, the destination and the time, pay by card and keep the ticket as a QR code on your phone, with no need to print it or validate it separately. At every station you’ll also find ticket machines, useful if you prefer to pay in cash or your phone is dead. The Transilien trains of the urban and regional area come under Transilien, SNCF’s brand for the Île-de-France, and under the network of Île-de-France Mobilités, the body that sets fares and zones.
What the Navigo covers, and what it doesn’t
If you have a Navigo, on how many of these six trips do you skip the ticket?
Three. Versailles, Saint-Denis and Provins stay inside the Île-de-France, in zone 4, in zone 3 and in zone 5: a Navigo pass that covers all zones includes them, and even without a pass the ticket you buy is still an ordinary Transilien or RER ticket, not a separate fare. Giverny, Chartres and Soissons, on the other hand, leave the region, for Normandy, Centre-Val de Loire and Hauts-de-France respectively: whatever Paris ticket or pass you hold, for these three you always pay for the regional train, because the network that serves them belongs to another region.
If your destination isn’t one of these six
For any other trip out of Paris, the quickest way to find the right station is to type the name of the town into the SNCF Connect search: the system picks the combination of lines by itself, whether RER, Transilien or TER, and tells you which of the six stations to leave from. For the regional trips in this article there’s no need to buy the ticket weeks ahead, because the trains run often and the price of a Transilien or a TER doesn’t go up as the date gets closer, unlike a long-distance TGV or OUIGO, where the cheapest fares sell out first.
Practical information
Figures checked on 9 October 2026 on SNCF Connect, Transilien and the Île-de-France Mobilités website. Prices and timetables change: check again before you leave.
Before you go
With these six stations in your head, the rest of the trip is just a matter of choosing the destination: a palace that fills the day, a garden that makes sense in one particular season, a cathedral, a walled town, an abbey in ruins or a basilica you reach like any other neighbourhood. By now you can find the right train on your own.
Photographs: Gare de Lyon hall by Florian Pépellin, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons; Gare Saint-Lazare façade by TouN, CC BY-SA 3.0; Francilien regional train at Gare Saint-Lazare by Wizly-08, CC BY-SA 4.0.
