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- the connoisseur's guide to France
IMPORTANT:
Covid pass
Update 2023. Covid
restrictions no longer apply for entry to
museums, restaurants and other public places. Masks remain recommended
on
public transport, and may be required for hospital / surgery visits.
In theory,
visitors to France must be protected against Covid, which means either
being fully vaccinated, or having recently recovered from covid.
Visitor passes
There's a massive amount of advertising on the Internet to
encourage
anyone interested in visiting Paris to buy a tourist pass. For some
visitors, a pass will definitely be worth having; but for others a pass
is quite unnecessary. Check out the pros and the cons with
this clear guide.
Visitor
passes are not essential, but they are
very valuable
You
will
want a pass if....
You value your limited time in Paris, and don't want to waste too much
time standing in queues.
With a Paris tourist pass in your pocket, you can "skip the lines",
i.e. avoid most of the queues that form outside the entrance to all the
main monuments and museums... and that can mean litterally saving
several hours of queueing if you visit Paris during a popular period.
If you value your time, you'll value a pass.
There are several different Paris visitor passes available.
To find the one that's best for your needs
►: Jump straight to
the
Pass
Comparer
Visitors who take a full pass including travel can
also just walk on to buses and
metros, saving even more time.
You
will not
need a pass if...
You have all the time in the world while visiting
Paris. If you're not pressed for time while in Paris, or don't want to
visit a lot of monuments, attractions and museums in a short space of
time, there's no point in buying a pass unless you still want to avoid
queuing for tickets at the main museums or monuments.
If you plan to visit just a couple of attractions
or museums in a day, or want to spend a whole day in the Louvre or
taking a trip out to Versailles, for example, it will be a lot
cheaper to buy tickets individually. You can buy print@home
e-tickets on the official sites for the
Louvre
or the
Musée
d'Orsay : to visit Versailles, you can buy a
half-day
coach tour from Paris City Vision, or make your own way to
Versailles by RER train.
Ticket queues
and security queues
Even if you have a pass, you may need to queue to get past security...
or just to show the pass. But you won't need to waste time standing in
a line to buy a
ticket for each visit you make . If you have a combined transport
and attractions pass, you won't have the hassle of needing to buy a
ticket each
time you take public transport.
Compare the main different Paris Passes:
updated 2023 prices
- Paris
City
Pass
: Recommended
by About-France.com The cheapest and best value of
the all-in-one pass:
includes museums (Louvre, Orsay etc.) , travel and
sightseeing. Adult passes start at 104.90 € for two days. Check
out or buy
- Go City
Paris inclusive
: This pass does not include any of the
major museums if
bought for only 2 or 3 days. To get into the museums (Louvre, Orsay
etc.), a minimum 4-day pass is needed. Four day passes comle in at €
199 . Two-day adult passes without the museums cost 89
€uross. Check
out or buy
- Go
City Paris explorer:
Does not include public transport Provides access
to between 2 and 7 attractions only; includes a Disneyland
option More
info here
- Paris
Pass'Lib. Access to between 3 and 6 attractions only, to
be chosen from a list. Four tarifs with different lists.
- Paris
visite: Travel only -
just a Paris public transport pass.
2 day adult pass zones 1-3: 19.50 € More
info here
- Paris
Museum pass : Museums only : just gives entry into the
main museums
(Louvre, Orsay etc.) 2 day pass 52 € . More
info here
Compare
Paris passes for content and standard prices - updated as of June 2023
Important: think what you can do in a day! Few visitors can manage more than five attractions in one day!
What
is included.. |
Go
City pass |
Paris
City Pass
Best value |
Go
City explorer pass
|
Paris
Museum Pass |
Website |
Go
City Paris or 畅游包 |
Paris
City Pass from Turbopass |
Go City Paris explorer |
Museum Pass |
Number of attractions included (approximately) |
2 or 3 day passes 30 longer passes: 80 |
All passes 60 (including transport)
|
From 3 to 7
|
50 |
Transport (= metro,
city buses) |
NO |
Yes - Zones 1 to 3 |
NO |
NO |
Main
museums and attractions |
2
or 3 day passes:NO
4 - 6 day passes: YES |
Yes |
Options |
Yes |
Eiffel
Tower |
To second floor on foot (674 stairs). Reservations
- subject to availability |
No (option) |
Option - Elevator to second floor Reservations required
- subject to availability |
No |
Seine
river cruise |
Yes |
Yes |
Option |
No |
Hop-on
hop-off tour bus |
Yes |
No |
Option |
No |
Monet
museum |
No |
No |
No |
No |
Prices
2 Days |
Adult 18+
: 89 €
Child 2 - 17 : 54 € |
Adult
: 109.00 €
Youth 12-17: 44.90 €
Child 4-11 : 19.90 € |
Passes
valid 60 days
Adult rates:
From 119 € for three attractions, to 189 € for 7 attractions
Child rates (up to 17)
From 109 € for three attractions, to 169 € for 7 attractions |
Adult
: 55 €
Under-18 : Free |
Prices
3 Days |
Adult
18+
: 107 €
Child 2 - 17 : 69 € |
Adult
: 139.90 €
Youth : 54.90 €
Child : 29.90 € |
(4
days)
Adult
: 70 €
Under-18 : Free |
Also
available |
4
days (Adult 199 €)
6 days |
4
days (Adult 169.90 €)
5 days
6 days |
4
days
6 days |
Info
and
buy |
Go
City Paris
Buy online in advance
|
Paris
City Pass
5% special
discount when you book from About-France.com. Code Aboutfrance
|
Go
City Paris explorer
|
Museum Pass
Buy in advance or at the first museum you visit, or at Paris visitor
centres |
Note: Most
passes are offered for periods of 2 days, 3 days, 4 days,
sometimes 5 days, and 6 days. The Paris Pass'lib is also
available for just one day, this "mini" version just
includes the hop-on tour bus and a Seine river cruise; but at
40 € for one adult, it is 20% more expensive than the Combo
bus
tour + Seine cruise offered by Paris City Vision
IMPORTANT: Eiffel Tower :
None
of the Paris passes include a lift/elevator ride up the
Eiffel Tower. (One
pass offers a second level Eiffel Tower ticket on
foot....
but a second level ticket is only € 10.50 on foot, or €16.70 by
lift/elevator on the official Eiffel
Tower site !) Access to the top of the tower must always
be purchased separately, or as part of certain specific
tours . It cannot be bought once you reach the second level.
Buy
your
Paris
City Pass or your
Go city Paris inclusive
pass online, then buy Eiffel tower ticket
online from the official site. See
Eiffel
Tower
information.
The passes in more detail....
- The Go City Pass
, and the Paris
City Pass
These
include attractions and Seine
cruise
These are both general limited-time passes for museums and
attractions.
The big difference
concerns two or three-day tickets, for which the Go-City Paris pass does not
include the main museums (and that means not just
theactual museums, but sights like the Arc de Triomphe and Saint
Chapelle).
These museum sites are included in all versions of the Paris City Pass.
For the Go-city pass, they are only ncluded in the 4 or 6-day
versions.
All these passes include a
Seine river cruise,
a free Paris guide
book,
and
lots more - but not the Eiffel Tower.
- The other main difference
between these two passes -
apart from the price - is that the Go City inclusive pass includes a
hop-on hop-off
bus tour bus, the Paris City Pass does not. By contrast,the Paris City
Pass includes
free use of public transport (RER, buses and metro in zones 1 to 3)
Buy
your pass in advance, and avoid
the queues to get in.
It
is pretty well impossible to visit everything covered by these two
inclusive passes, even with a five or six day pass, as the list of
attractions covered includes several that are well outside Paris. And
the passes do not include cafés and restuarants where you
will want to
stop off and relax
- Paris
Pass'Lib . This pass
was completely changed in 2021. Now it comes in 4 versions, offering
entry to between 3 and 6 attractions out of a list. With the cheapest
version (35€), choose 3 activities out of a list of 14. With the most
expensive version (189€) choose six out of a list of 57 attractions.
Obviously, the more expensive attractions only feature in the more
expensive passes. A Pass'Lib is valid a year.
- Go City Paris explorer
This may be a good idea if you want to include a
day at Disneyland
Paris, since the 119 € cost of a 3-attraction pass is the same as
the indicated "normal" adult day-ticket to Disneyland alone. (For the
record fixed-date adult day passes for Disneyland Paris cost
between 79€ and 114€ on the Disney
site depending on date). Otherwise, it is mainly useful for people
spending up to two months in Paris,
who
know that they will want to visit certain attractions. Passes
are valid
for between 2 and 7 attractions only.
Take care:
the choice of attractions is capped by a "purse value" which
is
the maximum amount you can use based on the standard gate price for
each attraction. For example, with a 3-choice adult Explorer
costing 119
€, you can visit three attractions the sum of whose
normal ticket prices is not greater than €205... which could include
both Disneyland and Parc Astérix.
One advantage of the Paris Explorer pass is that it can
include the second floor (not the top) of the Eiffel Tower. However, be
warned; the date and time of the Eiffel tower visit has to be booked in
advance, and the claimed 42€ value of the
tour to
the second
flooor of the Eiffel Tower can be misleading. The actual cost of access
to the second floor of the Eiffel tower is not 42€ but just
16.70
€ if you take the elevator (lift), and just 10.50 €
if you walk up (Prices as from January 2023) (see
Eiffel
Tower )
-
Paris visite: [Public transport only ]
Visitors who plan to use lots of
public transport in Paris but don't want to visit lots of museums and
sites may find that the best or cheapest solution
is to take a visitor's
pass, "Paris
Visite", though this is not necessarily the
case
(see below).
The Paris Visite passes are available on a 1, 2, 3 or 5 day basis, and
cover all types of official public transport in the central area or
central area and suburbs, depending on the option chosen.
DO NOT BUY
A
PARIS VISITE PUBLIC TRANSPORT PASS if you have bought, or plan to buy,
a Paris City Pass for visiting attractions and museums.
Public transport is
already included in the Paris City Pass. See above
Paris
Visite - gives unlimited use of the metro / RER / bus
network for a given numer of days. Prices
start at €14.90 for a one day adult pass covering zones 1 to 3
or 24.30
€uros for 2 days
(As of Jan
2023).
Full details in English, plus downloadable Paris
Metro
and
public transport maps from the official
Paris visitor website. However,
it's worth noting that a two-day Paris visite pass is only worth it if
you plan to do a lot of trips on the metro or buses in a day.
Downloading a
pack of ten individual journey tickets - a "carnet"
- (valid until they are used) from
the machine at any metro station will cost you € 17.90,
whereas buying
a two-day Paris
visite card will cost you €24.30 (see below) . You buy packs
of
tickets from the machines in all stations or, when there is one, from a
ticket booth. Paper tickets are no longer sold, though existing paper
tickets can be used until 2025.
To download tickets or a carnet,
visitors need first to download to their phone a
"Navigo Easy"
pass, which costs 2 €, onto which they can then load individual
tickets, or more sensibly a carnet of ten trips... plus any suburban
travel tickets they may need. Navigo Easy cards are available from all
machines and also in some shops. Each traveller needs his or her own
Navigo Easy card... including kids. So four people travelling together
need four cards, as each will need a card to get through the turnstiles.
Take care... Where
to buy Paris visite pass ?
The simplest is to buy it when
you reach France,
from any Paris area train / metro station, airport, information point
or tourist office. Buy it at the ticket office, not from a ticket
machine
(unless renewing). If you want to buy it on line in advance,
only do so here (official site):
you'll get the tickets at the official price, but you will pay extra
(at least 9 Euros) to have them mailed to you. DO
NOT
purchase in advance from other online websites that sell these tickets
well above the real cost, and charge excessively for delivery too. You
could end up paying double the cost......
- Paris
Museum pass [Museums
only ]
-
giving unlimited admission to some 60
monuments / museums in and around Paris, excluding the Eiffel Tower. Prices
start at 52
€uros for two days or 66€ for four days.
This pass - best
purchased
on the day at
the first museum you visit - does
not
include any transport, so things like Seine river cruises, metro
tickets and sightseeing tours must be purchased separately. See below.
The Paris Museum Pass is included in the Go City inclusive pass and the
Paris City
Pass (see
above).
- Choose
tickets à la carte :
Just buy tickets
for what
you have time to see. Check out sightseeing bus tickets and
river-bus tickets below; check out prices for individual monuments on
their websites, which are listed at the foot of our Paris tourist attractions page.
Tickets for many attractions can now be bought on the
attraction's own website, and with an online ticket (print your own or
on your phone) you don't need to stand in a queue to buy on the spot.
Other
passes:
- Hop-on
hop-off sightseeing bus pass
The Open-Tour
/Cityrama
service, has a choice of hop-on
hop-off passes from 39 € for a one-day pass, and covers four
different routes
(plus
optional Batobus service on the Seine). Alternatively Big
Bus Tours (formerly les Cars Rouges) run open-top
guided tour
buses linking nine major
sites; a two-day
pass costs 45€.
- The
"Batobus" and travel on the Seine.
The Batobus
are river buses that go up and down the Seine from the Eiffel tower to
the quai de Montebello (near Notre Dame). There are 8 stops in all. An
adult
day pass at the start of 2022 costs 19 €, and a 2-day pass
(consecutive days) costs 21
€ per adult.
WHICH PASS BEST SUITS
YOUR NEEDS?
PASSES are
often the easiest solution, but not necessarily the cheapest
way to visit Paris ...
►
Choosing which
pass is best for you, or whether you actually need a pass at all, will
depend untimately on what sights you want to see, what you want to do
in Paris, and how long you are staying. Paris has litterally
hundreds of different tourist sights (see
Paris tourist
attractions),
including museums, monuments, views, places to walk, tours, concert
halls, cabarets, restaurants and cafés. No-one has time to
see
everything. In fact, most tourists, in the space of a short trip to
Paris, can do no more than scratch the surface.
So before choosing a pass, or no pass, ask yourself the
following questions.
- Do
you want to take in at least three paid entry attractions a day
(between monuments, museums, river cruise...) . If so,
the Paris
City Pass is probably your best value option,
- Do you want primarily to visit Paris's world-class museums,
more than other attractions? If so, the Museum Pass may be your best
solution.
- Do
you want to avoid the big paid-entry sites, with their queues, and
enjoy Paris by visiting smaller museums, taking in Paris's free attractions (including
museums), soaking in the atmosphere of the old
streets
and riverbanks, and enjoying the bars and cafés ?
If so, you
don't
need a pass at all, it would be a waste of money. Just
pay at the entrance to the paid-entry sites you visit, and enjoy the
others for free.
- Do
you plan to use the metro or buses several times in a day,
including getting to and from your hotel located in central Paris or
the inner suburbs? If so, the Paris
city pass will give you free public transport plus entry to
dozens of attractions. Alternatively the Paris
Visite transport pass will just provide you with free travel
in the city for the duration chosen.
- Do you want to pack in as much as possible in a short space
of time, including the main sights ? If so, the Paris
City Pass is your best value option. If you want a pass
including hop-on hop-off buses, the go for the Go city Paris inclusive
Pass
- Are
you spending a few weeks in Paris, during which time you'll visit
different attractionsin your own time, on different days? Then maybe
the Go city Paris
explorer pass is best suited to your needs.
Copyright
About-France.com 2007 - 2023
2023
The
About-France.com
guide
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Disneyland
Paris... just click
The
best value Paris pass is now even
better
value with the About-France.com special discount
...
Even
before the About-France.com discount, The Paris City pass
is the cheapest of the full Paris visitor passes -
up to nearly 50% cheaper
for children. Prices start at just 19,90 Euros for a two day pass for
children and 104.90 Euros for a two day adult pass
Exceptional....
Get 5% off all passes by booking direct from About-France.com (click
here) and use the discount code "aboutfrance"
In
an emergency
in Paris:
24
hr chemist / pharmacies:
a) 84, av des Champs-Elysées 75008, tel
0145
62 02 41
b) 6, place Clichy 75009, tel
0148
74 65 18 .
English-speaking
pharmacies:
British Pharmacy
62, Avenue des Champs-Elysées
75008 Paris
0143
59 22 52
British-American pharmacy,
1 rue Auber, 75009
0142 65
88 29
English-language
crisis line;
SOS-Help
Daily 3 pm - 11pm
01 46 21 46 46
Ambulance:
Call/phone: 15
Hospitals:
Hertford British Hospital: 3, rue
Barbès, 92300 Levallois-Perret
Tel 0146 39 22 22
American Hospital of Paris
63, Bd Victor Hugo
92200 Neuilly-sur-Seine
0146
41 25 25
Text
and photos © copyright About-France.com 2004-2023