Four days built around markets and market streets — Enfants Rouges, Montorgueil, Mouffetard and Aligre — with Notre-Dame, the Louvre, the Luxembourg gardens and the Eiffel Tower after dark folded in between the meals.
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Numbered days, not dates — start it whenever you like, ideally April to June, September to October.
The oldest covered market, the Pletzl, arcades, then the cathedral.
The RER B is the quick way in: about half an hour to Gare du Nord, trains every 10 to 15 minutes, running from roughly 05:00 until just before midnight. The airport fare is €14 and there is no paper ticket any more — load it onto a Navigo Easy card, which costs €2 from any machine, or onto your phone, and ignore anyone offering to help at the barrier. Engineering work closes stretches of the northern half at weekends and late in the evening, so read the departure board before you commit.
Authorised in 1615 and the oldest covered market still trading in Paris, it is now a dozen kitchens — Moroccan, Japanese, Italian — around a handful of produce stalls, with shared benches you wait for rather than book. Closed Mondays; Tuesday to Saturday it runs into the evening, Sunday to late afternoon. Arrive before noon or you eat standing up.
The spine of the Pletzl, the old Jewish quarter, and the one food street in Paris whose week runs backwards: the kosher bakeries, delis and falafel windows shut on Saturday for Shabbat and open on Sunday, when most Paris shops are closed. Order at a window and eat walking — the lane is narrow, and the sit-down rooms cost twice as much for the same plate.
The oldest planned square in the city, finished in 1612: thirty-six matching pavilions over a vaulted arcade, with a gravel garden and four fountains inside. It is the quietest half hour in the Marais and the right place to sit on what you just bought. Victor Hugo's apartment at number 6 is a museum, closed Mondays — the permanent rooms are normally free, though a temporary show can put the whole visit behind a ticket.
Reopened in December 2024 after the fire, cleaned back to a pale stone nobody alive had seen. Entry is free and it is open every day, but the free timed slot on the cathedral's own site — released a couple of days ahead — is the difference between walking in and losing an hour in the square. The towers are a separate paid ticket, booked online, and they go first.
Overnight
Four nights in one place, because everything on this trip is a walk or one Métro ride from here: Enfants Rouges, Place des Vosges and Notre-Dame are all on foot, and Aligre and Montorgueil are a few stops. It is also the quarter whose shops open on Sunday, when much of the city does not, so a slow last morning still has somewhere to go. Two trade-offs worth pricing in: the bar noise along rue Vieille-du-Temple after dark, and buildings far older than lifts — ask which floor before you book.
A market street at breakfast, the old market quarter, then the museum.
The market street that outlived Les Halles next door — pedestrian, gently sloped, lined end to end with fishmongers, cheese counters and cafés whose terraces face each other across it. Stohrer at number 51 has sold pastry here since 1730, invented the baba au rhum, and opens seven days. Tuesday to Saturday gives you the full street: the market stalls are a Sunday-morning affair and Monday thins the traders, though the shops keep their own hours and this is one of the more Sunday-alive food streets in Paris. Several places take a fortnight off in August.
Zola called this the belly of Paris; the wholesale market moved out to Rungis in 1969, the iron pavilions came down from 1971, and a shopping centre under a glass canopy stands there now, which is not the reason to come. Come for what survived around it — Saint-Eustache alongside, free and open daily, and the kitchen-supply shops on rue Coquillière, where E. Dehillerin has sold copper pans off wooden shelves since 1820 and closes on Sundays.
Closed Tuesdays. Book a timed slot online — required in July and August, and effectively required the rest of the year — and take the afternoon, because the coach groups land at opening. On Wednesdays and Fridays it stays open to 21:00, which is the calmest the building ever is, and admission is free on the first Friday evening of the month after 18:00, except in July and August. Last entry is an hour before closing.
Every sign and every local calls this terrace Trocadéro, and the esplanade between its two curved wings looks straight down the axis the Eiffel Tower was built to face — the palace itself only dates from 1937, so it is the terrace that is the view, not the building. The tower sparkles for five minutes on the first full hour after nightfall and on every hour after that, which means about 22:00 in April, nearer 23:00 in May and June, and 21:00 by mid-September. Open air, free and never shut.
Overnight
Market street, mausoleum, a garden picnic, then cheese shops.
One of the oldest streets in Paris and still a working food street, running downhill over cobbles to the church of Saint-Médard: cheesemongers, bakeries, greengrocers and a wine shop every hundred metres. The stalls trade Tuesday to Saturday and Sunday morning, and the produce end is packed away by about 13:00 — Monday is the day nothing happens here. Buy the picnic now; it gets eaten two stops later.
A church the Revolution turned into a mausoleum: Voltaire, Rousseau, Zola, Marie Curie and Josephine Baker are in the crypt, and Foucault's pendulum still swings under the dome. Open every day, 10:00 to 18:30 from April to September and to 18:00 through the winter half, last entry 45 minutes before — but on the first working Monday of each month it opens only at 12:00, which is why this stop starts late. The outdoor colonnade around the dome is normally an April-to-October climb and is shut for renovation with no announced reopening, so check the site rather than count on the view; the crypt, the pendulum and the nave are unaffected.
The Senate's garden, and the best place in Paris to eat what you carried down the hill — though not on the lawns, which are fenced. Take two of the green metal chairs instead and drag them to the basin, where children push rented sailboats with sticks. Open daily and free; the gates open somewhere between 07:30 and 08:15 depending on the season and close at dusk, when guards blow whistles to clear it.
The quarter to shop rather than sit down: rue de Buci for cheese, charcuterie and fruit, and rue du Cherche-Midi for bread, where Poilâne bakes its sourdough miches at number 8 — Monday to Saturday, closed Sundays. The covered Marché Saint-Germain nearby is mostly chain stores now, with one small food hall left of the market it was. Tuesday to Saturday is the window that works: Sunday afternoon closes almost every independent food shop here, and Monday closes a good share of them.
Overnight
A neighbourhood market, a viaduct walk, a hill at sunset.
The market Parisians name when asked, because it is still a neighbourhood one: open-air produce down rue d'Aligre, the covered Marché Beauvau beside it for cheese and butchers, and a small flea market on the square between them. Both halves close Mondays and both are morning affairs — the outdoor stalls pack up by about 13:30 on weekdays and 14:30 at weekends, and the covered hall breaks for lunch midweek. On Thursdays and Sundays the much bigger Marché Bastille runs down the boulevard, ten minutes' walk away.
A disused railway viaduct planted as a linear park in 1993, sixteen years before New York's High Line borrowed the idea: you walk at rooftop height through roses and bamboo, level with second-floor windows. Start at the Bastille end, ten minutes from the market, and come back down at the Jardin de Reuilly. It opens at 08:00 on weekdays and 09:00 at weekends and public holidays, closing with the light; the brick arches underneath hold the craft workshops of the Viaduc des Arts.
Montmartre's food street, and the half that matters is the lower one: greengrocers, a fishmonger, cheese and bread along the first two blocks up from Blanche, before the street bends and starts climbing towards the hill's two surviving windmills. The shops keep the usual market-street week — Sunday mornings, closed Mondays. It is a steady uphill the whole way, so do this before the basilica rather than after.
The white basilica is free and open every single day, 06:30 to 22:30, which makes it the rare Paris sight you cannot turn up too late for. The funicular beside the steps takes a Métro ticket, but a second one — a ticket already used in the Métro will not open the gate. The dome is a separate paid climb with its own door on the left, currently 10:30 to 21:30 with a midday break and a last entry at 21:00, and much shorter in winter. The terrace faces due south over the whole city and holds its light all evening; sunset in these months falls anywhere from 19:00 to after 21:30, so plan to linger rather than to catch it.
Overnight
Markets, market streets and quarters rather than bookings
On foot, plus the Métro; no car and no intercity travel
Relaxed — one market each morning, one landmark each afternoon
Two adults who plan the day around where lunch is
April to June and September to October. Start on a Tuesday or Wednesday — Monday shuts the markets — and note that many food shops close for weeks in August.
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Every itinerary here is written as a real plan, then checked stop by stop before it is published: walkable distances, opening seasons, honest travel times, and two to four stops a day rather than a checklist. Nothing on this page is sponsored or paid for.
Days are numbered, not dated, so a plan never goes stale — open it in the app and it lands on real dates you can change. Coordinates come from Wikidata, and photos from Wikimedia Commons under the licence credited beside each image.
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