Underground & cool · 111 picks · 19 districts
Things to do in Paris that locals don't put on postcards
Covered passages and jazz cellars, speakeasies behind gold curtains, sculptors' studios that are free to walk into, hammams, rooftops, the parks Parisians actually use. Nothing here is a ticketed queue you could have found on a postcard. Every pick is re-checked for continued operation and grouped by arrondissement.
Last re-checked 3 Sep 2026 · 1 awaiting a hand re-check, still listed · filter & search →
Essentials — start here (6)
- ★ Little Red Door€€€ · Cocktail bar · 3eA fixture on the World's 50 Best list, it builds each menu around one argument — the current one ties every drink to agriculture and sustainability. The name's red door is a feint; there is no trick, just the bar.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily ~6pm–1amWorld's 50 Best
- ★ The Cambridge Public House€€€ · Cocktail bar / pub · 3eAn English-pub format crossed with serious mixology — ranked among the World's 50 Best Bars in 2025 — with craft beer, natural wine and British bar snacks behind a traditional pub front.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily ~15:00–01:00World's 50 Best
- ★ Jardin des Plantes€ · Botanical garden · 5eFrance's botanical garden, founded in 1626 as the royal medicinal beds and still run by the natural-history museum. The grounds are free: a long perspective of flowerbeds, an alpine garden, a rose garden, and a robinia planted in 1601, the oldest tree in Paris.✓ Verified open · 31 Aug 2026Daily ~7:30–20:00 summer, 8:00–17:30 winterAmong the oldestLong-running
- ★ Le Bal Blomet€€€ · Historic jazz club · 15eOpened in 1924 and billed as Europe's oldest surviving jazz room, the Blomet runs a ticketed cabaret-and-jazz programme under its restored Montparnasse ceiling — Legrand and Aznavour tributes, a resident big band, solo stride piano.✓ Verified open · 2 Sep 2026Concert evenings, times varyAmong the oldestLong-running
- ★ Librairie Galignani€ · Historic bookshop · 1erThe oldest English-language bookshop on the Continent, trading on rue de Rivoli since 1856 and run by six generations of the same family. Dark 1930s shelving holds around fifty thousand titles under the arcade; the fine-arts section is what regulars come for.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Sat 10am–7pm; closed SunAmong the oldestLong-running
- ★ Piscine de la Butte aux Cailles€ · Art-deco pool · 13eA 1924 red-brick Art-Deco municipal pool and listed monument — a vaulted indoor basin fed by an artesian well, plus heated open-air pools — in the village-like Butte-aux-Cailles.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun; hours vary by day/season; closed MonListed monumentLong-running
1er · Louvre & Les Halles (9)District guide →
- ★ Librairie Galignani€ · Historic bookshopThe oldest English-language bookshop on the Continent, trading on rue de Rivoli since 1856 and run by six generations of the same family. Dark 1930s shelving holds around fifty thousand titles under the arcade; the fine-arts section is what regulars come for.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Sat 10am–7pm; closed SunAmong the oldestLong-running
- Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection€€ · Contemporary-art foundationFrançois Pinault dropped a nine-metre Tadao Ando concrete cylinder inside the old grain exchange, leaving the 1889 glass dome and its painted frieze of colonial commerce overhead — a juxtaposition the curators don't pretend to resolve.✓ Verified open · 26 Aug 2026Mon, Wed–Sun 11:00–19:00 (Fri to 21:00); closed TueLong-running
- Galerie Véro-Dodat€ · Covered passageTwo pork butchers built this neoclassical run in 1826 and spent the money on it: marble columns, brass fittings, painted ceiling panels and a black-and-white tiled floor almost intact. Now home to Christian Louboutin's flagship and antique-instrument dealers.✓ Verified open · 28 Aug 2026Mon–Sat; closed SunLong-running
- 59 Rivoli€ · Artist squatA legalised former squat on Rue de Rivoli — six floors of working artist studios you climb through, meeting painters at their easels, with a ground-floor gallery that turns over every couple of weeks.✓ Verified open · 25 Aug 2026Tue–Sun 13:00–20:00; closed Mon
- Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain€€ · Contemporary-art foundationAfter forty years on boulevard Raspail the Cartier foundation reopened in October 2025 across from the Louvre, in a Haussmann block Jean Nouvel fitted with five mobile exhibition platforms that rise and sink through the floors on hydraulic rams.✓ Verified open · 27 Aug 2026Tue–Sun 11:00–20:00 (Tue to 22:00); closed Mon
- La Samaritaine€ · Department-store experienceReopened in 2021 after sixteen years dark, restored by LVMH. Frantz Jourdain's Art Nouveau hall keeps its wrought-iron staircase, enamelled-lava signage and the Jourdain peacock fresco — 115 metres of painted birds running below the glass roof.✓ Verified open · 1 Sep 2026Daily 10am–8pm
- Le Duc des Lombards€€ · Jazz clubTwo ticketed sets a night, 19:30 and 22:00, on a stage barely nine square metres, which keeps the room honest and the playing close. The booking runs to touring names.✓ Verified open · 2 Sep 2026Mon–Thu 19:30–midnight; Fri–Sat to 04:00; closed Sun
- Le Tout-Paris€€€ · Rooftop barThe 7th-floor bar at Cheval Blanc, a terrace panorama from Notre-Dame to the Eiffel Tower over the Seine. The bar takes no reservations; a summer-only rooftop, Le Céleste, sits above it.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Bar daily; no reservations at the bar
- Saint-Eustache — Keith Haring chapel€ · Church with modern artworkThe vast Gothic-Renaissance church above Les Halles holds Keith Haring's last work — the 1990 bronze triptych 'The Life of Christ'. Its side chapel was restored and reopened to visitors on 25 June 2026, properly lit for the first time.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily ~09:30–19:00 (check for services)
2e · Bourse & Sentier (10)District guide →
- Passage des Panoramas€ · Covered passageThe oldest covered passage in Paris (1799): a glass-roofed gallery of stamp dealers and old engravers, now lined with good little bistros and wine bars. The rainy-afternoon move.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Passage daily ~6am–midnight; shops varyAmong the oldest
- Galerie Vivienne€ · Covered passageThe grandest of the surviving 1820s arcades, built in 1823 between the Bourse and the Palais-Royal. A vaulted glass roof throws light onto floor mosaics laid by Italian craftsmen; the tenants run to rare-book dealers and a long-established tea room rather than chains.✓ Verified open · 28 Aug 2026Daily 8:30am–8:30pmLong-running
- Le Grand Rex — Les Étoiles du Rex€€ · Historic cinema (backstage tour)Europe's largest auditorium sits behind a 1932 Art Deco facade. The self-guided tour moves through the building's machinery — projection booth, the 2,700-seat grande salle, the special-effects room — narrated as a mock film shoot.✓ Verified open · 3 Sep 2026Tue–Thu & Sat–Sun, 10:00–12:00 & 13:30–19:00Long-running
- Passage Choiseul€ · Covered passageAt 190 metres the longest covered passage in Paris, built 1826–27 and reopened in 2013 after restoration. Céline grew up above it and set part of 'Death on the Installment Plan' here. Art-supply shops, booksellers, ateliers, and the stage door of the Bouffes-Parisiens.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Sat 8am–8pm; closed SunLong-running
- Passage du Grand-Cerf€ · Covered passageBuilt in 1825 and, at nearly twelve metres, the tallest of the passages, with a wrought-iron-and-glass roof that floods the alley with light. It went over to makers rather than tourists: jewellers, lighting designers, leatherworkers and small studios, several working in view.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Sat 8:30am–8pm; closed SunLong-running
- Danico€€€ · Cocktail barReached through the Daroco restaurant off the 19th-century Galerie Vivienne, this is Nico de Soto's bar — globe-trotting flavour combinations executed with precision, his clarified and split-base drinks the things to order.✓ Verified open · 27 Aug 2026Daily ~6pm–2am
- Lockwood€€ · Café & cocktail cellarA specialty coffee bar by day on Rue d'Aboukir; downstairs after dark, a candle-lit stone cellar pours cocktails until late. Two operations in one address, both done properly.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily; cellar evenings to ~2am
- Mabel€€ · Rum & cocktail barA grilled-cheese café up front; a back room behind it stocked with more than a hundred rums and built by Joseph Akhavan into one of the city's serious cocktail dens. The toasties are not a gag — they are the food menu.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Wed 7pm–midnight; Thu–Sat 7pm–2am
- O'Kari€€€ · Hammam (women only)A women-only Moroccan hammam near Montorgueil, sold as timed rituals — steam, black-soap gommage and rhassoul clay — by appointment rather than drop-in.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Sat 10:00–20:00 (Thu to 21:00); closed Sun
- Rex Club€€ · Electronic clubParis's longest-running room for techno and house, running its programming through a Funktion-One rig that rewards the people who came for the sound rather than the scene. Long sets that don't bother with last call until daylight.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Wed–Sat, midnight–7am
3e · Haut Marais (9)District guide →
- ★ Little Red Door€€€ · Cocktail barA fixture on the World's 50 Best list, it builds each menu around one argument — the current one ties every drink to agriculture and sustainability. The name's red door is a feint; there is no trick, just the bar.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily ~6pm–1amWorld's 50 Best
- ★ The Cambridge Public House€€€ · Cocktail bar / pubAn English-pub format crossed with serious mixology — ranked among the World's 50 Best Bars in 2025 — with craft beer, natural wine and British bar snacks behind a traditional pub front.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily ~15:00–01:00World's 50 Best
- Musée Carnavalet — Histoire de Paris€ · Free history museumThe city's oldest museum, reopened in 2021, runs the whole arc of Paris across two Marais mansions. The pulls are specific: Proust's cork-lined bedroom, the model guillotine, Fouquet's Art Nouveau jewellery boutique transplanted intact, and a wall of old painted shop signs.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; closed MonAmong the oldest
- Bisou€€ · Bespoke cocktail barNo drinks menu at all: tell the bartender your mood and they build a bespoke cocktail from seasonal produce. A second bar, Bisou Canal, sits on Quai de Jemmapes in the 10th.✓ Verified open · 25 Aug 2026Daily 5pm–2am
- Candelaria€€ · Speakeasy barOrder a taco at the counter of a narrow taquería, then push through the unmarked white door at the back into the room that opened the city's speakeasy era in 2011. The cocktails stay precise and agave-led.✓ Verified open · 26 Aug 2026Bar nightly until ~2am
- Gaîté Lyrique€ · Digital-culture arts centreA 19th-century operetta house converted into a centre for digital creation, reopened to the public on 13 January 2026 after a long closure. Talks, debates, screenings and concerts, Tuesday to Sunday.✓ Verified open · 28 Aug 2026Tue–Sun; see agenda
- Musée Cognacq-Jay€ · Free 18th-century house-museumThe fortune came from La Samaritaine; the taste ran entirely to the eighteenth century. Watteau, Boucher, a small Rembrandt, Fragonard pastels and Sèvres hang in the panelled rooms of the Hôtel Donon.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; closed Mon
- Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature€€ · Unusual museumA Marais mansion where taxidermy, antique weaponry and contemporary art share period rooms — including a ceiling lined with owl feathers. One of the city's strangest, best small museums.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun 11:00–18:00 (Wed late Sep–Jun); closed Mon
- Ofr.€ · Bookshop & galleryAlexandre and Marie Thumerelle's bookshop in the Haut-Marais, the supply line for independent fashion, photography, design and art magazines from Seoul to São Paulo. A small gallery behind it runs rolling exhibitions and launches.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily 10am–8pm
4e · Le Marais & Île Saint-Louis (5)District guide →
- Pavillon de l'Arsenal€ · Architecture & urbanism centreParis's free centre for architecture and urbanism, in an 1879 iron-and-glass hall by the Seine. A large permanent scale model of the city covers the ground floor; the temporary shows upstairs argue over how the place should be built next.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sat 10:30–18:30, Sun 11:00–19:00; closed MonLong-running
- Lafayette Anticipations€ · Contemporary art foundationThe Galeries Lafayette foundation's commissioning space in a Marais building Rem Koolhaas hollowed out around a glass exhibition tower that physically moves on rails between floors. Free shows of newly produced work.✓ Verified open · 1 Sep 2026Wed–Sun 11:00–19:00
- Le Studio des Parfums€€€ · Perfume atelierA Marais atelier where you blend and bottle your own fragrance from raw essences under a perfumer's eye, then leave with the formula kept on file for reorders.✓ Verified open · 3 Sep 2026Daily ~11:00–19:00, by reservation
- Les Bains du Marais€€€ · HammamA contemporary hammam off the rue des Blancs-Manteaux running a steam-and-sauna circuit on a fixed schedule of women-only, men-only and mixed sessions, with scrub and massage bookable on top.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Sun, mixed/women/men days vary — check booking page
- Musée de la Magie et des Automates€€ · Magic & automata museumIn sixteenth-century vaulted cellars under the Marais, a thousand years of deception laid out as hardware: more than 100 automata, distorting mirrors, trick boxes and Robert-Houdin ephemera. Admission folds in a short live conjuring turn.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Wed, Sat, Sun 14:00–19:00 (daily in school holidays)
5e · Latin Quarter (10)District guide →
- ★ Jardin des Plantes€ · Botanical gardenFrance's botanical garden, founded in 1626 as the royal medicinal beds and still run by the natural-history museum. The grounds are free: a long perspective of flowerbeds, an alpine garden, a rose garden, and a robinia planted in 1601, the oldest tree in Paris.✓ Verified open · 31 Aug 2026Daily ~7:30–20:00 summer, 8:00–17:30 winterAmong the oldestLong-running
- Le Caveau de la Huchette€€ · Jazz cellarA vaulted 16th-century stone cellar run as a swing and bebop club since 1949, with a live band and a packed dance floor every night. Come to dance, not to watch.✓ Verified open · 26 Aug 2026Nightly from ~21:30 (to 2:30–5:30am)Long-running
- Le Champo€ · Repertory cinemaA two-screen repertory house on the rue des Écoles since 1938, run on retrospectives and ciné-clubs rather than new releases — a complete István Szabó cycle one season, the occasional seven-hour anime marathon with coffee and croissants at dawn.✓ Verified open · 2 Sep 2026Daily, screenings ~13:30–22:30Long-running
- Piscine Pontoise€ · Art Deco poolA 1933 Art Deco municipal pool with a 33-metre basin under a listed glass roof, swimmable from early morning through to a blue-lit nocturne that runs to midnight on weekdays.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Opens ~06:30; weekday nocturne ~20:15–midnightLong-running
- Shakespeare and Company€ · Independent bookshopGeorge Whitman's English-language bookshop, opened in 1951 opposite Notre-Dame. Narrow stairs, beds among the shelves where 'Tumbleweeds' have slept since the 1950s, a piano, a wishing well and a reading library upstairs — a bookshop and a stubborn anachronism at once.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Wed 10am–8pm, Thu–Sat to 9pm, Sun 12–7pmLong-running
- Arènes de Lutèce€ · Roman amphitheatreA surviving 1st-century Roman amphitheatre sunk into the Latin Quarter, now an open public ground where locals play pétanque and kick footballs on the sand that once held gladiators.✓ Verified open · 25 Aug 2026~09:00–20:30 Apr–Oct; ~08:00–17:30 Nov–Mar
- Caveau des Oubliettes€€ · Jazz cellarA 12th-century stone cellar, once a dungeon, given over to nightly jam sessions rather than ticketed billings — soul on Wednesdays, jazz-funk on Thursdays and Sundays. Sets run on a fixed clock at 21:45, 22:45 and 23:45.✓ Verified open · 26 Aug 2026Wed–Sun; sets 21:45/22:45/23:45; closed Mon–Tue
- Hammam de la Mosquée de Paris€€ · HammamThe 1920s bathhouse attached to the Grande Mosquée runs a marble steam circuit under a starred dome, finished with a sugared black-soap scrub and mint tea in the tiled courtyard.✓ Verified open · 28 Aug 2026Daily ~10:00–21:00; men's/women's days alternate — verify
- Institut du Monde Arabe rooftop terrace€ · Free viewpointTake the lift to the ninth floor of Jean Nouvel's building — its south wall a grid of 240 photosensitive metal apertures that open and close like camera diaphragms — and walk onto a free terrace facing the apse of Notre-Dame across the Seine.✓ Verified open · 31 Aug 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; closed Mon
- Les Bouquinistes de la Seine€ · Open-air booksellersRoughly 900 wagon-green boxes bolted to the river parapets, worked by licensed second-hand dealers in books, old prints and postcards. Recognised in 2019 as French intangible heritage, and defended in 2024 when a plan to remove them for the Olympics was overruled.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily ~11am–sunset, weather depending
6e · Saint-Germain-des-Prés (4)District guide →
- Musée national Eugène-Delacroix€ · Artist house-museumDelacroix took this apartment and built the garden studio behind it in 1857 to be near the Saint-Sulpice murals he was finishing, and died here in 1863. The real draw is the green courtyard and the purpose-built atelier off it.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon, Wed–Sun, hours vary; closed TueLong-running
- Musée Zadkine€ · Free sculptor's studio-museumOssip Zadkine carved in this low cottage off rue d'Assas from 1928 to 1967, and his Cubist figures now stand among the plane trees of its small garden as if they grew there. One of only a handful of intact artists' studios left in the city.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; closed MonLong-running
- The Red Wheelbarrow Bookstore€ · Independent bookshopPenelope Fletcher's English-language bookshop, facing the Luxembourg gardens — a tightly chosen Left Bank selection of literary fiction, poetry, small-press and food writing, with the bilingual children's offshoot next door.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily; hours vary
- Tiger Bar€€ · Gin cocktail barA Saint-Germain bar built around gin — more than 200 bottles on the back wall and a menu that treats juniper as a subject rather than a base. Quiet street, serious list.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sat ~6pm–2am
7e · Eiffel Tower & Invalides (4)District guide →
- Deyrolle€ · Curiosity shopA working taxidermy house from 1831 whose first-floor showroom is a genuine cabinet of curiosities — lions, bears, cases of iridescent butterflies — open to wander for free.✓ Verified open · 27 Aug 2026Mon 10:00–13:00 & 14:00–19:00, Tue–Sat 10:00–19:00; closed SunLong-running
- Le Bon Marché€ · Department-store experienceThe world's first department store, opened 1852, with structural work attributed to Gustave Eiffel's firm. The draw now is the architecture: glazed roofs and Andrée Putman's crisscrossing 1989 escalators rising through the atrium. La Grande Épicerie next door is a food hall vast enough to browse like a gallery.✓ Verified open · 2 Sep 2026Mon–Sat 10am–7:45pm, Sun 11am–7:45pmLong-running
- Musée des Égouts de Paris€ · The sewers museumA museum inside the working sewer itself: a dry gallery on Belgrand's nineteenth-century network, then a wet gallery down in the live tunnels under the quai, smell included. Hugo set part of Les Misérables in these galleries.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00; closed Mon
- Rosa Bonheur sur Seine€€ · GuinguetteRosa Bonheur's barge moored at the Port des Invalides, with a Seine-level terrace, pizza from 5pm, a Saturday guinguette ball and a Sunday dance evening.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun from 6pm to midnight–1:30am
8e · Champs-Élysées & Madeleine (2)District guide →
- Musée Cernuschi€ · Free Asian-art museumHenri Cernuschi brought back archaic Chinese bronzes and, from Japan, the two-metre eighteenth-century bronze Buddha of Meguro that now anchors the stairwell. The permanent rooms — Neolithic jades, Han figures, Tang ceramics — are free, and the mansion sits against Parc Monceau.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; closed Mon
- Musée Jacquemart-Andr退 · House-museum (Italian & French art)Édouard André and the painter Nélie Jacquemart spent a banking fortune on a Belle Époque mansion and an 'Italian museum' within it — Tiepolo, Uccello, Mantegna, Botticelli — reopened March 2026. The set piece is the double-helix marble staircase under a Tiepolo ceiling.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Thu 10:00–18:00; Fri to 22:00; Sat–Sun to 19:00
9e · South Pigalle & Opéra (5)District guide →
- Galeries Lafayette dome & rooftop€ · Department-store experienceWorth entering for the building rather than the goods. Jacques Gruber's 1912 stained-glass cupola hangs over the central hall; eight floors up, the open rooftop terrace gives a free 360-degree view from the Opéra to Sacré-Cœur and the Eiffel Tower.✓ Verified open · 28 Aug 2026Mon–Sat 10am–8:30pm, Sun 11am–8pmLong-running
- Musée de la Vie Romantique€ · Free Romantic-era house-museumAt the foot of a private alley in old Nouvelle Athènes, the painter Ary Scheffer's 1830 house — reopened February 2026 — keeps the parlour where Chopin, Liszt and George Sand passed Friday evenings, plus the plaster cast of Sand's arm and Chopin's hand.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; closed MonLong-running
- Musée Gustave Moreau€ · Artist house-museumMoreau converted his own townhouse into a museum before he died in 1898, stacking the upper floors into two great glass-walled studios crammed with thousands of Symbolist works, joined by a coiling wrought-iron spiral staircase that is the most photographed object in the building.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon, Wed–Sun 10:00–18:00; closed TueLong-running
- Passage Verdeau€ · Covered passageThe 1847 northern end of the Panoramas-Jouffroy-Verdeau chain, and the quietest of the three. Its glass canopy lights a row of antiquarian booksellers and print dealers specialised down to the object: old cameras, postcards, engravings.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Fri 7:30am–9pm, Sat–Sun to 8:30pmLong-running
- Musée du Parfum Fragonard€ · Free perfume museumA step from the Opéra Garnier, the Grasse house Fragonard fitted out a Napoléon III apartment as a perfume museum: copper stills, a wall of antique scent bottles, and a 'perfume organ' of labelled raw-material vials a nose would blend from.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Sat 09:00–17:30; Sun to 16:30
10e · Canal Saint-Martin & Gare du Nord (7)District guide →
- Canal Saint-Martin towpath€ · WalkA Napoleon-era canal of 1825 climbing through nine locks and arched iron footbridges, where you can stand on a passerelle and watch boats rise and fall between basins. Tree-lined cobbled quais run either side before the water vanishes underground.✓ Verified open · 30 Aug 2026Public quais, all hoursLong-running
- Le Louxor — Palais du Cinéma€ · Historic arthouse cinemaA 1921 cinema dressed as an Egyptian temple — gilded mosaics, pharaonic heads on the facade — that spent decades as a clothing shop and a nightclub before a 2013 restoration. Three screens of art-et-essai programming.✓ Verified open · 3 Sep 2026Daily, late morning to ~23:00Long-running
- New Morning€€ · Jazz clubA 450-capacity room running since 1981, broad enough in its booking to put gospel, the Bad Plus, Kenny Garrett and Joshua Redman in a single fortnight.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Concert nights ~19:30–01:00Long-running
- Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord€€ · Theatre (Peter Brook's house)Peter Brook took over this gutted 1876 hall in 1974 and left the scorched, peeling pink-red walls exactly as he found them; it has staged theatre, opera and chamber music in the round ever since, with no proscenium grandeur.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026By programme; check the saisonLong-running
- Lavomatic€€ · Speakeasy barA cocktail bar reached by pressing a button on a fake washing machine inside a working-looking laundromat; upstairs, pop-coloured poufs and swing seats.✓ Verified open · 1 Sep 2026Tue–Sat from 19:00 (Fri–Sat to 2am); closed Sun–Mon
- Le Syndicat€€ · Speakeasy barThe storefront is papered over with torn gig posters; the only signal is a gold metallic curtain. Inside, every cocktail is built exclusively from French spirits — Armagnac, Cognac, Calvados, Chartreuse.⚑ Last confirmed 28 Jun 2026 · re-check pendingDaily ~6pm–2am
- Point Éphémère€ · Canal-side music & arts centreA former materials depot on the Canal Saint-Martin run since 2004 as a concert hall, studios and residency space, with a terrace straight onto the water. Amplified music most nights, plus dance, talks and temporary shows.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Sun, hours vary (often 12:00–02:00)
11e · Oberkampf & Bastille (5)District guide →
- Born Bad Record Shop€ · Record shopTrading since 1999 and the eastern anchor of Paris vinyl, near Bastille. The bins lean garage, punk, post-punk, cold wave, surf, soul and French 1960s, in rare originals and quality reissues, much of it on the shop's own label.✓ Verified open · 25 Aug 2026Mon–Sat 12pm–7:30pm; closed SunLong-running
- Le Balajo€€ · Historic dance hallA 1936 musette hall on the old accordion street, the Balajo keeps its mirrored Deco room and still opens it on Monday afternoons for a thé dansant before the week tips into salsa classes and clubbing to dawn.✓ Verified open · 2 Sep 2026Mon 2–7pm; Thu 7:30pm–7am; Fri–Sat 11pm–7amLong-running
- Atelier des Lumières€€ · Immersive digital-art centreA 19th-century iron foundry where 140 projectors throw paintings across the walls and floor in roughly half-hour cycles, the programme rotating between Renaissance masters and modern names. A short, deliberately enveloping spectacle rather than a museum.✓ Verified open · 25 Aug 2026Daily ~10:00–18:00 (extended weekends)
- Le Perchoir Ménilmontant€€ · Rooftop barThe original Perchoir rooftop, on a former industrial building, with a 360° skyline that's best as the sun drops behind Sacré-Cœur.✓ Verified open · 3 Sep 2026Most evenings to 2am; rooftop seasonal
- Moonshiner€€ · Speakeasy barA working pizzeria, Da Vito, fronts the operation. The cocktail room sits behind the walk-in fridge at the back, and you get in by pulling open the fridge doors — a 1920s register of leather, low light and a record player.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Sat ~6pm–2am
12e · Bastille, Bercy & Aligre (6)District guide →
- Coulée verte René-Dumont€ · Elevated walkNearly five kilometres of linear park along a railway viaduct closed in 1969 — the elevated walk that predates and prompted New York's High Line. The first stretch runs ten metres up over the brick arches of the Viaduc des Arts, whose vaults hold craft workshops.✓ Verified open · 27 Aug 2026Daily ~8:00 (9:00 weekends) to duskLong-running
- Bois de Vincennes — Lac Daumesnil€ · Lake & woodlandThe largest of the lakes in the Bois de Vincennes, with two wooded islands joined by bridges. On the Île de Reuilly a folly temple stands above an artificial grotto and waterfall, with a Tibetan temple and the Grande Pagode nearby in the trees.✓ Verified open · 25 Aug 2026Woodland continuous; boats daily 10:00–20:00 (Feb–Nov)
- Le 100 ECS€ · Self-managed arts centre1,800 m² of former workshops near Place d'Aligre handed over to studios and stages without a selection committee — visual arts, theatre, photography, video for anyone who turns up. It runs the December 12×12 festival.✓ Verified open · 2 Sep 2026Mon–Fri 09:00–21:00, Sat 10:00–18:00; closed Sun
- Musée des Arts Forains€€€ · Fairground museumA private collection of 19th-century fairground rides and carousels in the Bercy pavilions — many you actually ride on the guided tour. Reservation-only, so it stays uncrowded.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026By reservation (guided tours ~1h30)
- Rowboats on Lac Daumesnil€ · Rowboat hireHire an open wooden rowboat on the lake in the Bois de Vincennes and pull yourself out to its two islands — the same boating ritual Parisians have kept up for more than a century.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily exc ~15 Nov–15 Feb; weekends from 10:00
- Supersonic€ · Free live-rock clubA Bastille rock bar that has put on free concerts most nights since 2016, across two rooms and a mezzanine where a mock food-truck bar looks down on the stage. Three bands deep, the late set holding until six at weekends.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Thu 18:30–02:00; Fri–Sat to 06:00
13e · Chinatown & Butte-aux-Cailles (7)District guide →
- ★ Piscine de la Butte aux Cailles€ · Art-deco poolA 1924 red-brick Art-Deco municipal pool and listed monument — a vaulted indoor basin fed by an artesian well, plus heated open-air pools — in the village-like Butte-aux-Cailles.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun; hours vary by day/season; closed MonListed monumentLong-running
- Boulevard Vincent Auriol street-art walk€ · Open-air mural circuitUnder the elevated viaduct of métro line 6, the Itinerrance gallery has commissioned some two dozen tower-block-scale murals — Shepard Fairey's tricolour Marianne, D*Face's 25-metre 'Turncoat', Inti's secular Madonna — turning a stretch of the 13th into a wall museum.✓ Verified open · 30 Aug 2026Open street, 24/7
- Djoon€€ · House & disco clubOpen since 2003 under the elevated métro near the Seine, Djoon has spent two decades defending house, disco and soulful music on a 300-capacity floor built around one of the better soundsystems in the city.✓ Verified open · 27 Aug 2026Fri–Sun, ~11pm until early morning
- Les Frigos€ · Artists' studios in a cold-storeA 1920s refrigerated railway warehouse squatted by artists in the 1980s, now roughly 80 studios behind corridors layered in graffiti, over 7,000 m² along the Seine. The ground-floor L'Aiguillage gallery shows year-round.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Gallery Mon–Sat 14:00–19:00; studios by appointment
- Manufacture des Gobelins workshop tour€ · Workshop tourA guided tour into the working royal tapestry manufactory, where weavers still knot Gobelins tapestries by hand on upright looms much as they did under Louis XIV.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Guided tours select days; gallery Tue–Sun
- Parc Kellermann€ · ParkThe largest park in the 13th, terraced into the line of the old Thiers fortifications with 1930s level changes and a formal French garden up top. A working neighbourhood park — football pitch, tennis, an outdoor fitness circuit — rather than a tourist stop.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily ~7:00 to dusk; summer to ~21:30
- Petit Bain€€ · Floating music venueA three-level barge moored under the Mitterrand library, Petit Bain stacks a 450-capacity concert hall, a restaurant and a planted rooftop terrace over the Seine, with programming from international metal to club nights and activist festivals.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun, hours vary with the gig schedule
14e · Montparnasse & Denfert (2)District guide →
- Parc Montsouris€ · ParkOne of the four big English-style parks Alphand laid out under the Second Empire, opened in 1869 across some fifteen hilly hectares on the Left Bank. Rolling lawns built for picnics, a large artificial lake, mature exotic trees, and a quieter crowd than the central gardens.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily ~7:00 to dusk; summer to ~21:30Long-running
- Institut Giacometti€ · Artist studio reconstructionThe Fondation Giacometti runs this small Art Deco townhouse opposite Montparnasse cemetery, its centrepiece a faithful reconstruction of Alberto Giacometti's cramped studio — the actual painted walls, furniture and plaster figures transplanted from the workshop he kept for forty years.✓ Verified open · 31 Aug 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; closed Mon
15e · Vaugirard & Beaugrenelle (4)District guide →
- ★ Le Bal Blomet€€€ · Historic jazz clubOpened in 1924 and billed as Europe's oldest surviving jazz room, the Blomet runs a ticketed cabaret-and-jazz programme under its restored Montparnasse ceiling — Legrand and Aznavour tributes, a resident big band, solo stride piano.✓ Verified open · 2 Sep 2026Concert evenings, times varyAmong the oldestLong-running
- Musée Bourdelle€ · Free sculptor's studio-museumAntoine Bourdelle — Rodin's assistant, teacher to Giacometti — lived, taught and cast bronze on this Montparnasse plot until 1929, and the studios, apartment and two sculpture gardens survive almost untouched. The plaster hall lines up his monumental casts, 'Herakles the Archer' among them.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; closed MonLong-running
- Parc André-Citroën€ · ParkBuilt in the 1990s on the old Citroën factory site, a hard-edged garden of glasshouses, themed walled plots and a broad lawn sloping to the Seine. Computer-timed water jets cross a central terrace, and children stand in them all summer.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily; summer weekdays 7:00–21:30
- Petite Ceinture du 15e€ · Railway walkA green ribbon of abandoned 19th-century railway reclaimed as a wild-nature walk through cuttings and a 300-metre tunnel — quiet, and almost untouristed. A 2025 extension lengthened it.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily, daylight hours (seasonal)
16e · Trocadéro & Passy (3)District guide →
- Fondation Louis Vuitton€€ · Contemporary-art foundationFrank Gehry's twelve billowing glass sails sit in the Bois de Boulogne over a building whose terraces and water-staircase are half the visit. The architecture rewards the climb to the upper decks more than any single canvas does.✓ Verified open · 30 Aug 2026Mon, Wed–Thu 11:00–20:00; Fri to 21:00; Sat–Sun 10:00–20:00; closed Tue
- Musée de la Contrefaçon€ · Counterfeiting museumRun by the manufacturers' anti-fraud union, this mansion holds 500-odd seized fakes set beside the genuine article: counterfeit amphorae, forged banknotes, fake Rodin bronzes, knock-off bags, dud brake pads and counterfeit medicine. The pleasure is the side-by-side.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Fri 14:00–17:30; closed weekends & August
- Parc de Bagatelle€ · Rose gardenAn English-style park inside the Bois de Boulogne, built around a château the Comte d'Artois put up in sixty-four days on a 1777 wager. The draw is the rose garden — some ten thousand bushes that peak in June — with waterfalls, grottoes and free-roaming peacocks.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily ~9:30–20:00 May–Aug, earlier off-season
18e · Montmartre & Pigalle (9)District guide →
- Musée de Montmartre — Jardins Renoir€€ · Local museum & artist studioThe oldest house on the Butte, where Renoir painted the 'Bal du Moulin de la Galette' in the garden and where Valadon and Utrillo later kept a studio-apartment, now restored. The terraced Renoir gardens look straight down onto the Clos Montmartre vineyard.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily 10:00–19:00; summer Wed to 22:00Among the oldest
- Madame Arthur€€ · Drag cabaretA drag cabaret operating under this name since 1946, now a weekly French-chanson revue in a small Pigalle room: four performers in opulent costume reworking the standards, the theme rewritten each week.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Show nights Thu–Sat, eveningsLong-running
- Studio 28€ · Historic cinema with garden barOpened in 1928 as the first cinema built for the avant-garde — Buñuel's L'Âge d'Or provoked a riot here in 1930. Chandeliers designed by Cocteau hang in the 170-seat hall, and a back garden runs as a bar.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily, afternoon to eveningLong-running
- Arkose Montmartre€ · Bouldering gymA bouldering gym below Montmartre with ropeless walls graded for first-timers as well as regulars, plus a bar and yard for when your forearms give out.✓ Verified open · 25 Aug 2026Daily ~07:00–00:00
- Cimetière de Montmartre€ · CemeterySunk into a former gypsum quarry below the streets, with the iron Pont Caulaincourt carried straight over the graves. Zola, Degas, Stendhal and Berlioz lie here; Dalida's flowered bust draws a daily crowd. Quieter and more wooded than Père-Lachaise, and full of cats.✓ Verified open · 27 Aug 2026Mon–Fri 8:00–18:00, Sat from 8:30, Sun from 9:00; 17:30 winter
- La REcyclerie€ · Eco arts spaceA former Petite Ceinture station turned eco-hub, with an urban farm, a repair workshop and a canteen on the old platform — and hundreds of cheap or free events a year.✓ Verified open · 1 Sep 2026Daily into the evening; weekend nights to ~2am
- La Station — Gare des Mines€ · Experimental music venueA timber venue built into a derelict rail building at the Porte d'Aubervilliers, on the literal edge of Paris beside the ring road — a self-described laboratory for the musical and artistic margins. Club nights, label showcases and experimental sets.✓ Verified open · 1 Sep 2026Open only during announced events
- Les Puces de Paris Saint-Ouen€ · Flea marketThe largest antiques flea market in the world — a dozen labyrinthine sub-markets of vintage furniture, art and curiosities just north of the 18th. Go to get lost, and to haggle.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Sat 9–18, Sun 10–18, Mon 11–17; closed Tue–Thu
- Marché Saint-Pierre€ · Fabric marketSeven floors of fabric at the foot of the Sacré-Cœur steps, the trade descendant of a 1920s Montmartre barrow-man. Couturiers, set decorators and students come for wholesale-priced cottons, silks and remnants; the surrounding streets hold a dozen rival cloth houses.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Mon–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat to 7pm; closed Sun
19e · La Villette & Buttes-Chaumont (6)District guide →
- Parc des Buttes-Chaumont€ · ParkAlphand built this in 1867 out of a worked-out gypsum quarry: a fifty-metre cliff, a suspension footbridge over a lake, grottoes hung with cast-concrete stalactites, and the Temple de la Sibylle on the island above the water.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily ~7:00–22:00 summer; shorter in winterLong-running
- Butte Bergeyre€ · ViewpointFive streets on a hundred-metre hump, laid out in the 1920s over a defunct stadium and reached by one road and a staircase. From the railing on Rue Georges-Lardennois the rooftops fall to Sacré-Cœur, with a small municipal vineyard directly below.✓ Verified open · 26 Aug 2026Public streets, all hours
- Canauxrama Canal Saint-Martin cruise€€ · Canal cruiseA flat-bottomed boat works its way along Canal Saint-Martin through nine locks, two swing bridges and the long vaulted tunnel beneath Bastille — the slow, mechanical opposite of a Seine sightseeing loop.✓ Verified open · 26 Aug 2026Several daily departures spring–autumn
- Combat€€ · Cocktail barA bright, women-led Belleville cocktail bar — inventive but unfussy drinks, windows that fold open over the sloping pavement in summer. A local's room, not a set-piece.✓ Verified open · 27 Aug 2026Daily ~18:00–2am (check Tue)
- Parc de la Villette€ · ParkFifty-five hectares on the old cattle-market grounds, scored by the Canal de l'Ourcq and studded with Tschumi's red steel follies. The science museum, the mirrored Géode and the Philharmonie share the lawns where the free open-air film festival runs in July and August.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily; no access 1:00–6:00
- Planétarium de la Cité des Sciences€€ · PlanetariumThe 360-degree dome at the science museum in La Villette — the working Paris planetarium while the Palais de la Découverte's stays shut — projects immersive sky and deep-space films.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Tue–Sun, several sessions daily
20e · Belleville & Ménilmontant (4)District guide →
- La Bellevilloise€€ · Arts & music venueLodged in an 1877 workers' cooperative, La Bellevilloise stacks a concert hall, a basement club, an olive-tree-lined restaurant and a rooftop across four floors, and programs all of them hard — Sunday jazz brunches, weeknight café-concerts, DJ nights.✓ Verified open · 31 Aug 2026Varies by event; restaurant Thu–Sat eve, Sun lunchLong-running
- Piscine Georges Vallerey€ · Olympic poolA 50-metre Olympic pool, originally built for the 1924 Games and refitted for the 2024 ones, with a roof that slides open over the water when the weather turns warm.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Seasonal municipal hours — check timetableLong-running
- Parc de Belleville€ · ViewpointOne of the highest parks in Paris, with a hilltop belvedere that opens across the rooftops to the Eiffel Tower — a locals' sunset spot above terraced gardens, with Belleville bars at the gate.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Daily ~8am–dusk (to ~21:30 in summer)
- Rue Dénoyez€ · Street-art laneA short Belleville lane repainted continuously for years — walls, shutters and shopfronts layered in spray paint, with someone usually at work on the next piece. The live, changeable half rather than a preserved set.✓ Verified open · 28 Jun 2026Open street, 24/7
par.is is a living map of Paris. Every place here is a real, currently operating destination — re-checked over time and flagged the moment we can no longer confirm it's open. No paid placements, no scraped directory: just opinionated picks worth your trip.