Three days in Paris are enough for the Louvre, Notre-Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre, as long as you never cross the same neighbourhood twice. Before you split the days up there is only one thing to know: the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays.
It is a small constraint, because Notre-Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Eiffel Tower and the Sacré-Cœur do not close on any day of the week: if a Tuesday falls inside your stay, you only have to move the Louvre, and everything else stays where it is.
The three days come in order, with the real time each visit takes, where it pays to book ahead rather than queue, what the Paris Museum Pass actually costs over a stay this short, and three day trips for a possible fourth day: the Palace of Versailles, Giverny and Chartres Cathedral.
And is there a day of the week worth saving for the Louvre?
Off we go!
What changes with the day of the week
| Day of the week | What changes |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | the Louvre is closed: it cannot be the Louvre day |
| Monday | none of the five stops close, but the Musée d’Orsay does, and it is the wrong day for a trip to Versailles |
| Wednesday and Friday | the Louvre stays open until 21:00: the two best days to end there |
| Other days | the programme below works as it stands |
Tuesday forces you to change something only if it is your first day: then start with the Eiffel Tower or Montmartre, which never close, and move the Louvre to the day after. If it falls in the middle or at the end of your stay the programme works as it stands, because Day 2 and Day 3 do not touch the Louvre, and swapping them would put it right on Tuesday. And if you are already thinking about a fourth day outside Paris, keep in mind from now that Versailles closes on Mondays, while Giverny and the nave at Chartres have no weekly closing day, though Giverny shuts for the season on 1 November.
Day 1: the Île de la Cité and the Louvre
Start from the Île de la Cité, the island on the Seine where Paris was born. Go into Notre-Dame as soon as it opens: entry to the cathedral, reopened in December 2024 after the fire, is free, but the queue grows fast and in busy periods it pays to book a time slot online, also free.
A hundred metres on, inside the Palais de Justice complex, you find the Sainte-Chapelle, the royal chapel with the tallest stained glass in Paris: here the ticket is not free (16 euros for residents of the European Economic Area, 22 for everyone else), and with the crowds it draws, it pays to book a skip-the-line entry online before you go, not at the door.
In the afternoon cross the Pont Neuf and reach the Louvre. If your Day 1 falls on a Wednesday or a Friday, go in late, around 17:00: those two days the museum stays open until 21:00, and by the end of the afternoon the main galleries empty out. Before going in, look at the glass pyramid with a different eye: when I. M. Pei unveiled it in 1989, part of Paris saw it as an affront to the palace courtyard; today it has become the museum’s own symbol. And if you have a spare moment the next morning, under the square, in the Carrousel du Louvre shopping centre, there is a second pyramid, inverted and smaller, that you can see for free even without a ticket.
The ticket costs 22 euros for residents of the European Economic Area and 32 for everyone else, also includes the Musée Delacroix on the same day or the next, and is free under 18. How the entrances, time slots and which galleries to see first actually work, I explain in How to skip the line at the Louvre, while the works not to miss are in The Louvre: the works.
Day 2: the Eiffel Tower and the left bank
Book the time slot for the Eiffel Tower online and turn up early in the morning, when the light is lower and the queue shorter. At the top of the tower, on the third level, Gustave Eiffel had a small private apartment built, which today you see through the glass with the same ticket as the summit: there he received guests such as Thomas Edison, who gave him one of the first phonographs ever built.
After the tower, cross the Champ de Mars and climb up to the Trocadéro, on the other bank of the Seine: from there you get the head-on view of the whole tower, the postcard one, and it is also the best spot to photograph it without the sun against you. In the afternoon, head down towards the Invalides, along the left bank: under the golden dome lies Napoleon, and the Musée de l’Armée tells his military history through armour, uniforms and the same tomb. The ticket costs 17 euros, 12 reduced, and the museum opens every day, so the calendar gives you no trouble here.
Day 3: Montmartre and the Sacré-Cœur
Go up to Montmartre early: the Sacré-Cœur basilica opens at 6:30 and is free, and at eight in the morning the square in front of the white dome is still empty, before the coaches arrive. From there you get the highest view over Paris after the Eiffel Tower, and the morning light on the city is the one the painters who lived here were really after.
Then go down through the old village’s narrow streets, towards place du Tertre, where street painters still work as they did a hundred years ago. The hill also holds the last vineyard left in Paris, the Clos Montmartre: the harvest happens right at the end of September, these very days, and on the first weekend of October the hill celebrates with the Fête des Vendanges. The rest of Montmartre’s stops, from the cemetery to the views over the Seine, are lined up in What to see in Montmartre.
How much it really costs, and when the Paris Museum Pass is worth it
Is it worth buying the Paris Museum Pass for just three days?
The sum works the same way as in Paris Museum Pass: across this itinerary’s three days, the only stops the pass covers are the Sainte-Chapelle, the Louvre and the Army Museum at the Invalides. The Eiffel Tower charges for entry, but it stays outside the network, and Notre-Dame and the Sacré-Cœur ask nobody for a ticket.
Add those three tickets up and look at the result. On the European Economic Area rate you pay 16 euros at the Sainte-Chapelle, 22 at the Louvre and 17 at the Invalides, which comes to 55 euros; if you arrive from outside it, the Sainte-Chapelle asks 22 and the Louvre 32, and the total rises to 71 euros. The version that covers three full days is the four-day one, and VisitParisRegion, the official tourist board for the Paris Île-de-France destination, publishes it at 105 euros: fifty more than your tickets if you are European, thirty-four more if you are not. On this itinerary the pass does not pay for itself, and it is not even close: the conclusion holds with the lowest table circulating online as well, which gives 90 euros for the same version.
With a fourth day at Versailles, the Palace’s Passeport, 35 euros, joins the sum: you reach 90 euros on the European rate and 106 without it. The first total stays fifteen euros below the pass, the second draws level with it to within a euro. So not even the day trip saves you money: at best it breaks even, and with a pass to use up within 96 hours instead of four tickets you book whenever it suits you.
That gap between 55 and 71 euros, though, tells you something that weighs on every pass calculation: in France the full price does not depend on age alone, but on citizenship and residency. The Sainte-Chapelle costs a European 6 euros less and the Louvre 10, a European under 26 gets into both free, and the pass is sold at a single price for everyone. If you arrive from outside the European Economic Area you pay the full rate at every door, so you are the one the pass comes closest to paying off for, with one stop fewer: redo the sum with your prices, not with a European’s.
And if one of your three days falls on a Monday, when other big museums such as the Orsay stay closed in the city, the list of no-ticket alternatives I checked museum by museum in Paris for free keeps your morning busy without spending anything, before you reach this itinerary’s stops in the afternoon.
The fourth day, if you can take it: Versailles, Giverny or Chartres
Which of the three day trips out of Paris is really in a hurry?
Which of the three day trips to pick depends on when you go. At Giverny, Monet’s house and garden, the gate closes on 1 November 2026 and the official site has not yet announced the 2027 reopening date: if you are in Paris in late September or in October, it is the trip to bring forward, and here you will find a guided day trip from Paris that also solves the train-plus-shuttle problem. The Palace of Versailles stays open all year instead, except on Mondays: if your fourth day falls exactly on a Monday, swap it for Giverny or Chartres, and book the Passeport, the only ticket that also opens the Domaine de Trianon. Chartres Cathedral, finally, has no closing day at all for its free nave: it is the most flexible of the three trips, and also the furthest from Paris.
Practical information
Details rechecked on 30 September 2026: the official pages of the Sainte-Chapelle and the Sacré-Cœur basilica respond to a direct fetch (the latter states the basilica’s hours “sans exception”, without publishing the dome’s hours), while those of the Louvre, Notre-Dame and the Eiffel Tower reject automated requests, and their figures come from a second source citing the same official page; the Musée de l’Armée at the Invalides remains checked on 22 September 2026 on its own site. The price of the Versailles Passeport was checked on 2 October 2026 on the Palace’s site, while the Paris Museum Pass prices come from VisitParisRegion and were read the same day, because the pass’s official site rejects automated requests. Prices and opening hours change: check again before you travel.
Tickets. The Louvre costs 22 euros for residents of the European Economic Area and 32 for everyone else, and also includes the Musée Delacroix. The Sainte-Chapelle costs 16 and 22 euros. The Musée de l’Armée at the Invalides costs 17 euros, 12 reduced. Notre-Dame and the Sacré-Cœur basilica charge no ticket at all. The Eiffel Tower ranges from 14.80 euros for the second floor on foot up to 36.70 euros for the summit by lift. Closures. The Louvre is the only one to close on a fixed day, Tuesday. Notre-Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Eiffel Tower, the Sacré-Cœur basilica and the Musée de l’Armée open every day of the week. Bookings. The Louvre and the Eiffel Tower recommend a time slot even to those who already have a ticket in hand. At the Sainte-Chapelle and Notre-Dame, online booking is not compulsory, but it avoids the day’s longest queue. Getting around. The metro links every stop: line 4 for the Île de la Cité, line 6 to Bir-Hakeim or the RER C to Champ de Mars-Tour Eiffel for the tower, line 8 or 13 for the Invalides, line 2 or 12 for Montmartre. A Navigo Easy pass loaded with the right tickets covers all three days. How much time it needs. Three full days are enough for this itinerary’s five main stops. With one of the three day trips out of Paris, the programme grows to four or five days.
If you only have two days, what to cut
If you only have two days, do not try to squeeze three full days into two: cut Montmartre, not the centre. Keep Day 1 and Day 2 as written above, and if your return flight or train leaves in the afternoon, use the morning for a quick version of the Sacré-Cœur basilica, which opens at 6:30 and is about twenty minutes by metro from Gare du Nord: the whole hill, with the vineyard and the narrow streets, stays for next time, along with the three day trips out of Paris I told you about above.
And before booking any ticket, redo the Paris Museum Pass sum with the dedicated article. Over two days, though, the stops the pass covers still come to three, because the day you cut is Montmartre, the one that costs nothing: the sum above does not change, and your three tickets do not even reach the two-day version, which VisitParisRegion gives at 85 euros.
Photographs: Eiffel Tower by Maksim Sokolov (maxergon.com), CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons; Louvre pyramid by Aliva Sahoo, CC BY-SA 4.0; Notre-Dame nave by Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0; Sacré-Cœur basilica by Terragio67, CC BY-SA 4.0.
