Underground & cool · Free · 49 picks · 18 districts
Free things to do in Paris
Everything here costs nothing to walk into: covered passages, parks, free city museums, viewpoints, bookshops and markets. Every pick is re-checked for continued operation.
Last re-checked 22 Sep 2026 · all underground & cool → · full ledger →
Essentials — start here (1)
1er · Louvre & Les Halles (5)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 · 9 Sep 2026Mon–Sat 10am–7pm; closed SunAmong the oldestLong-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 · 11 Sep 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 · 22 Sep 2026Tue–Sun 13:00–20:00; 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 · 15 Sep 2026Daily 10am–8pm
- 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 · 21 Sep 2026Daily ~09:30–19:00 (check for services)
2e · Bourse & Sentier (4)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 · 20 Sep 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 · 11 Sep 2026Daily 8:30am–8:30pmLong-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 · 20 Sep 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 · 21 Sep 2026Mon–Sat 8:30am–8pm; closed SunLong-running
3e · Haut Marais (3)District guide →
- 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 · 19 Sep 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; closed MonAmong the oldest
- 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 · 19 Sep 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; 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 · 20 Sep 2026Daily 10am–8pm
4e · Le Marais & Île Saint-Louis (2)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 · 21 Sep 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 · 15 Sep 2026Wed–Sun 11:00–19:00
5e · Latin Quarter (4)District guide →
- 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 · 22 Sep 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 · 22 Sep 2026~09:00–20:30 Apr–Oct; ~08:00–17:30 Nov–Mar
- 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 · 14 Sep 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 · 18 Sep 2026Daily ~11am–sunset, weather depending
6e · Saint-Germain-des-Prés (2)District guide →
- 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 · 20 Sep 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 · 22 Sep 2026Daily; hours vary
7e · Eiffel Tower & Invalides (2)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 · 11 Sep 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 · 15 Sep 2026Mon–Sat 10am–7:45pm, Sun 11am–7:45pmLong-running
8e · Champs-Élysées & Madeleine (1)District guide →
9e · South Pigalle & Opéra (4)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 · 11 Sep 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 · 20 Sep 2026Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; closed MonLong-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 · 21 Sep 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 · 20 Sep 2026Mon–Sat 09:00–17:30; Sun to 16:30
10e · Canal Saint-Martin & Gare du Nord (2)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 · 13 Sep 2026Public quais, all hoursLong-running
- 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 · 21 Sep 2026Mon–Sun, hours vary (often 12:00–02:00)
11e · Oberkampf & Bastille (1)District guide →
12e · Bastille, Bercy & Aligre (3)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 · 11 Sep 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 · 10 Sep 2026Woodland continuous; boats daily 10:00–20:00 (Feb–Nov)
- 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 · 22 Sep 2026Mon–Thu 18:30–02:00; Fri–Sat to 06:00
13e · Chinatown & Butte-aux-Cailles (3)District guide →
- 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 · 13 Sep 2026Open street, 24/7
- 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 · 18 Sep 2026Gallery Mon–Sat 14:00–19:00; studios by appointment
- 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 · 20 Sep 2026Daily ~7:00 to dusk; summer to ~21:30
14e · Montparnasse & Denfert (1)District guide →
15e · Vaugirard & Beaugrenelle (3)District guide →
- 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 · 19 Sep 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 · 20 Sep 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 · 21 Sep 2026Daily, daylight hours (seasonal)
18e · Montmartre & Pigalle (4)District guide →
- 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 · 11 Sep 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 · 14 Sep 2026Daily into the evening; weekend nights to ~2am
- 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 · 21 Sep 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 · 19 Sep 2026Mon–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat to 7pm; closed Sun
19e · La Villette & Buttes-Chaumont (3)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 · 20 Sep 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 · 10 Sep 2026Public streets, all hours
- 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 · 20 Sep 2026Daily; no access 1:00–6:00
20e · Belleville & Ménilmontant (2)District guide →
- 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 · 20 Sep 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 · 21 Sep 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.