Look up at the corner of the boulevard and you’ll see a square tower of pale stone, its twin arched windows open under a slate spire, its wall patched and patched again, standing in the middle of the traffic and the parked cars. It’s the bell tower of an abbey founded in the sixth century, and in autumn the flank of the church behind it vanishes under a spill of red ivy. Within a kilometre of that tower there are three museums with nothing whatsoever in common, a second church with a chapel painted by Delacroix, and a mint that still strikes coins.
The quarter has no dead day, and that’s exactly how it catches you out: what it has instead is a clock. From Monday to Friday the Musée Delacroix opens at noon and closes at 17:30, so a weekday morning here won’t hold it, while on Saturday and Sunday it opens at 10:00 like everything else. The rest fits around that one line: the Delacroix rests on Tuesday, the Monnaie de Paris on Monday, the Maillol never.
Why does a Paris museum keep its doors shut every working morning of the week?
Let’s go!
1. The église Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which opens at 7:30
Start here for a practical reason before a historical one: the church is free, it opens every day, and from Tuesday to Friday it unbolts the doors at 7:30, four and a half hours before the nearest museum. On Monday and Sunday it opens at 9:30, on Saturday at 8:30, and it always closes at 20:00. Weekday masses are at 12:15 and 19:00, Sunday masses at 11:00 and 19:00: turn up at those times and you’ll find the nave taken, and you’ll be looking in from the back.
Inside you expect the Middle Ages and you get the nineteenth century everywhere, and the reason is a brutal one. During the Revolution the church was turned into a saltpetre refinery, a gunpowder works, and little of what stood here before came through it. The architect Hippolyte Godde put the building back together in 1820, raising the Lady Chapel and commissioning from François-Joseph Heim (1787-1865) the two large grisaille paintings of 1828, the Adoration of the Magi and the Presentation in the Temple. Then, between 1842 and 1870, Hippolyte Flandrin and Alexandre Denuelle covered every wall with decoration painted in wax. It isn’t fresco and it isn’t oil, it’s a third technique, and the warm, opaque colours that hit you the moment you walk in come from it. The church has been a listed monument since 1862.
One detail changes the way you look at all this. The restoration of that decoration began in 2016 and has redone almost every painted surface of the nineteenth century; the work on the Lady Chapel, including the altar, the walls, the oculus and the statue by Charles Dupaty (1771-1825), finished in March 2024. What you’re looking at is eighteen months old, not two hundred, and nearly every photograph circulating online was taken before.
2. The Musée Delacroix, the afternoon museum
Here’s the answer to the question at the top. The museum fills Eugène Delacroix’s last flat and last studio, at the back of a courtyard off place de Furstenberg, and it’s a small house. It says it opens late «to give priority to visitor comfort», which means not putting three hundred people inside four rooms. The short hours aren’t an oversight, they’re a decision about capacity, and you’re the one who pays for it if you turn up at 10:00 on a Wednesday.
So write down the two lines that matter. Monday to Friday it opens 12:00-17:30, Saturday and Sunday 10:00-17:30, and it closes on Tuesday. Full admission costs 9 euros.
Free entry here is more generous than it looks, and almost everybody misses one of them: you get in free on the first Sunday of every month and on 14 July. Under-18s don’t pay, nor do under-26s resident in the European Economic Area, teachers working in the relevant subjects, disabled visitors and whoever comes with them. Holders of the Paris Museum Pass and of the carte Louvre get in free all year round.
And then there’s the link with the Louvre, worth ten euros to anyone who knows about it: a Louvre ticket gets you into the Delacroix free on the day of your booking, or on the next day the museum opens. There’s also a joint Louvre-Delacroix ticket at 22 euros, if you’d rather pay once. The six things worth slowing down for inside the flat I’ve lined up in Musée Delacroix: 6 things to see, and if the Louvre queue frightens you, everything else is in How to skip the line at the Louvre.
3. Saint-Sulpice, the chapel Delacroix painted at the end
From Delacroix’s flat you walk a quarter of an hour south and you reach his building site. You can see Saint-Sulpice from a long way off, because it has a front nobody ever finished and two bell towers unlike each other. The left one is closed off by a balustrade and a regular drum, the right one is rougher, the stone left bare and the mouldings barely blocked out. In front of them the fountain of the four bishops pours water from two stacked basins, with lions crouched at the corners and the prelates sitting inside their niches.
The chapelle des Saints-Anges, first on the right as you walk in, is Delacroix’s last great undertaking, and the reason this square belongs in an art guide rather than a walking one. Admission is free: you don’t pay, you don’t book, and nobody asks you for anything. I won’t give you the hours, though, because I couldn’t find them on the parish’s own pages and they shift with the mass times: if you’ve got a single afternoon, phone ahead or walk past twice.
4. The cafés on the boulevard, which are the quarter’s other story
Saint-Germain-des-Prés has two identities laid one over the other, and the second is barely a century old: after the war, the abbey quarter turned into the quarter of the cafés people wrote in. The Café de Flore still holds its corner of the boulevard with a green and white awning, parasols on the pavement, marble tables pushed up against one another. On the first floor a balcony has been turned into a garden, and the palms and pink planters lean out over the sign. A few metres away stand Les Deux Magots and the brasserie Lipp.
Looking at them costs nothing and, if you don’t feel like sitting down, it’s also the sensible thing to do: those tables are priced by their address. Take them as the trace of a moment, because they explain better than any plaque how a monastic quarter ended up in the photographs of the 1950s. Everything you can look at in Paris without paying, I’ve put into a list in Paris for free.
5. The Musée Maillol, the private one that gives nobody a discount
Here the rules change. The Maillol stands on rue de Grenelle, a private museum born from the collection of Dina Vierny, who started posing for Aristide Maillol at fifteen and was his model for ten years. It never closes: it opens every day 10:30-18:30, with Thursday running until 22:00. It’s the one place in the quarter you can slot into a Monday or a Tuesday without a second thought.
Warning: the ticket desks don’t close when the museum closes, but an hour and a half earlier. So the last moment to buy is 17:00 on ordinary days and 20:30 on Thursday, and anyone turning up at 17:30 convinced they’ve made it stays outside.
Full admission costs 19.90 euros and covers everything, because there’s only one ticket: no fare exists for the permanent collection alone, and the temporary exhibition sits inside the same price. The reduced rate is 17.90 euros from the age of 65 and 15.90 euros from 6 to 18, for students, for jobseekers and for disabled visitors, whose companion gets in free on a ticket collected at the welcome desk. The audio guide costs 5 euros. There is no free admission at all, not even for children over six, and the museum’s pages never mention the Paris Museum Pass, so if you carry one, ask at the desk instead of assuming. The six things to see inside are in Musée Maillol: 6 things to see.
And here’s the fact that sums the quarter up better than any other: on the first Sunday of the month, in Saint-Germain, two museums out of three charge nothing and the third charges twenty euros to everybody. The public and the private sit five hundred metres apart, and they behave in opposite ways.
6. The Monnaie de Paris, and the move almost nobody knows how to make
What is there to see inside a mint that still strikes coins?
The craftsmen at work behind the glass, the hands that engrave and the hands that strike, and in Paris there are few other places where you can watch it. One is the workshops of the Manufacture des Gobelins, which open by booking only and on a guided tour. Which hands, though, depends on the day of the week, and the calendar here is tighter than anyone expects.
Go down to the river and the quarter changes face again. Along the quai de Conti stand the dark dome of the Institut de France, home of the Académie française, and right beside it the Monnaie de Paris, which has struck coins since the eighteenth century and is now a museum too, the musée du 11 Conti. In front of it the Pont des Arts carries people from one bank to the other on its iron arches, and below, along the quai, the barges lie moored.
The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday 11:00-18:00 and closes on Monday. On Wednesday it runs on until 21:00, the only long evening in midweek: the other two fall on Thursday at the Maillol and on Monday at the Musée du Luxembourg, which opens only when an exhibition is up. Last entry is at 17:30, and at 20:30 on Wednesday. Full admission costs 12 euros, the reduced rate 8, and under-26s get in free on a document, with no residence condition. Entry is free on the first Sunday of the month as well. The guided tour costs 14 euros, with two reduced rates at 10 and 6.
Two things the official pages bury at the bottom, and both are worth the price of the ticket. The first: anyone holding a personal Navigo pass pays 10 euros instead of 12, and if they’re under 26, and therefore get in free, they can hand that reduced rate to the person they bring. The second: reductions and free entry are granted at the ticket desk only, on proof less than three months old, and even the people who pay nothing have to be issued an exemption ticket.
Then comes the subtlest constraint in the whole quarter, the one that decides which day you come. The craftsmen work Monday to Friday and the museum closes on Monday, so the workshops in action can only be seen from Tuesday to Friday. The engraving demonstration, on the other hand, is held on Saturday and Sunday, running continuously from 15:00 to 17:00. The two never fall on the same day. Either you watch the hands working during the week, or you watch the demonstration at the weekend: you’re obliged to choose. I go through the six rooms and the round of the workshops in Monnaie de Paris: 6 rooms in the musée du 11 Conti.
An honest notice about the building work: at this moment there’s scaffolding on both entrances, the one at 11 quai de Conti and the one at 2 rue Guénégaud. The museum states that the hours are unchanged and that both ways in stay open, and it publishes no end date for the works.
7. The Musée du Luxembourg, which exists only when an exhibition is up
How can a Paris museum be closed without being under restoration?
It has no collection to keep open. The Musée du Luxembourg closes between one exhibition and the next, and it says so itself. It’s the big exhibition hall of the Réunion des musées nationaux inside the Senate’s palace, not a collection museum, and its calendar alternates openings and gaps. On 2 October 2026 I couldn’t verify on an official source whether an exhibition was running, so I’m giving you neither a title nor a price. The exhibitions page opens inside a browser only and, from outside, returns nothing readable.
When an exhibition is up, though, the museum behaves in a way hardly anything else in Paris does: it opens every day 10:30-19:00 and on Monday it stretches to 22:00. Put that beside the rest and you see what it’s worth: on Monday the Monnaie is shut, the Delacroix opens at noon, and the Luxembourg, if it’s hung, hands you four hours of evening. Last entry is 45 minutes before closing and the ticket office shuts an hour before. The Jardin du Luxembourg around it is free, with hours that move with the season, and a garden takes you in even when the museum is dark.
Practical information
Data checked on 2 October 2026 on the official sites of the individual venues. Prices and hours change: check again before you leave.
Tickets. Full admission to the Musée Delacroix costs 9 euros and covers the flat and the studio; a joint Louvre-Delacroix ticket costs 22 euros. The Monnaie de Paris asks 12 euros full and 8 reduced for the museum, 10 euros from anyone holding a personal Navigo pass and 14 euros for the guided tour, with two reduced rates at 10 and 6. The Musée Maillol costs 19.90 euros full, which covers the permanent collection and the temporary exhibition together, because there is only one ticket. The reduced rate is 17.90 euros from the age of 65 and 15.90 euros from 6 to 18, for students, for jobseekers and for disabled visitors, whose companion gets in free on a ticket collected at the welcome desk. The audio guide costs 5 euros on top. No verified price. I’m not giving the Musée du Luxembourg’s rate, because it depends on whichever exhibition is up, and its page returned nothing readable to me on 2 October 2026. Opening hours. The Delacroix opens 12:00-17:30 Monday to Friday and 10:00-17:30 on Saturday and Sunday, and closes on Tuesday. The Monnaie opens 11:00-18:00 Tuesday to Sunday, with Wednesday until 21:00 and last entries at 17:30 and at 20:30, and closes on Monday. The Maillol opens every day 10:30-18:30, with Thursday until 22:00, and its ticket desks close an hour and a half earlier, so at 17:00 and at 20:30. The église Saint-Germain-des-Prés opens 7:30-20:00 Tuesday to Friday, 8:30-20:00 on Saturday and 9:30-20:00 on Monday and Sunday. The Musée du Luxembourg, when an exhibition is up, opens 10:30-19:00 every day and on Monday until 22:00. Closures. The Monnaie de Paris closes on Monday, on 1 January, on 1 May and on 25 December, and on 24 and 31 December it winds up early at 16:00 with last access at 15:30. The Delacroix closes on Tuesday. The Maillol has no weekly closing day. The Musée du Luxembourg stays closed in the gaps between one exhibition and the next. Free admission. The Musée Delacroix is free for everybody on the first Sunday of the month and on 14 July, and free all year for under-18s, for under-26s resident in the European Economic Area, for teachers of the relevant subjects and for disabled visitors with the person who comes with them. Holders of the Paris Museum Pass and of the carte Louvre get in free as well. Anyone with a Louvre ticket gets in free on the day of their booking or on the next day the museum opens. The Monnaie de Paris is free on the first Sunday of the month and for under-26s, with no residence condition. The Musée Maillol offers no free admission of any kind. The église Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the chapelle des Saints-Anges at Saint-Sulpice are free to enter, and the Jardin du Luxembourg is free. Getting there. Saint-Germain-des-Prés on line 4 is the quarter’s own stop and sits three minutes from the Musée Delacroix, while Mabillon on line 10 is the alternative. For the Monnaie de Paris get off at Pont Neuf on line 7, at Odéon on lines 4 and 10 or at Saint-Michel on line 4. For the Maillol get off at Rue du Bac on line 12, at Sèvres-Babylone on lines 10 and 12 or at Saint-Sulpice on line 4. The line that holds the quarter together is line 4. How long it takes. One afternoon is enough for the church, the Delacroix and Saint-Sulpice, which sit within a quarter of an hour on foot. All seven stops ask for a full day, and it’s worth splitting them into two half days if you want to add the Luxembourg as well, because from the Maillol to the Monnaie, from rue de Grenelle to the quai de Conti, the walking isn’t what it is in the Marais.
How to line them up
The best day is Wednesday, for one reason only: the Monnaie de Paris runs on until 21:00 and hands you an evening. A well-built Wednesday starts at 7:30 in the church when there’s nobody in it, goes to Saint-Sulpice, gets into the Delacroix the moment it opens at noon, calls at the Maillol in the afternoon and finishes at the Monnaie after dinner, having seen the workshops in action.
The weekend is the reverse: the Delacroix opens at 10:00 and the Monnaie runs its engraving demonstration from 15:00 to 17:00, so the programme fills up earlier and you don’t have to wait for noon to start. Monday stays the day of the Luxembourg and the church, Tuesday the day of the Monnaie and the Maillol, Thursday the one when the Maillol holds out until 22:00.
If Saint-Germain is one stop inside a shorter trip, it sits on the route I’ve laid out in What to see in Paris in 3 days. Across the Seine, ten minutes from the Pont des Arts, the Marais begins, where the calendar is far harsher than here, and just to the east, on this same bank, lies the Latin Quarter. Head south instead and you come to Montparnasse, where almost none of the stops asks for a ticket, the Catacombs being the single exception.
Photographs: église Saint-Germain-des-Prés and église Saint-Sulpice by Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Café de Flore by Cheng-en Cheng, CC BY-SA 2.0; Institut de France by DiscoA340, CC BY-SA 4.0.
