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Paris Discounts
The Paris Museum Pass (and other discounts on the Louvre and Versailles)
Paris Museum Pass
The Paris Pass
You can purchase it at any participating sight,
major Métro stations, and tourist office branches.
•
€30 for two days
• €45 for four days
•
€60 for six days
www.parismuseumpass.com
The Paris Museum Pass (Carte Musées et Monuments) is one of the best in Europe. It covers 40 major museums and monuments in Paris (and another 21 in the surrounding region), from the statue-studded gardens of the Rodin Museum to the stained glass windows of Sainte-Chapelle, and from the top of the Arc de Triomphe to the bowels of the city sewers. (Actually, this Égouts de Paris tour is one of the more fascinating in town; did you know Paris flushes enough solid waste each day to fill a six story building?)
The only notable sights not covered by the card are the Eiffel
Tower, Montparnasse Tower, and Marmottan Museum. The museums pass starts paying
for itself almost immediately. Without it, you'd pay €27 just to visit
the Louvre (€9), Musée d'Orsay (€8), and the Pompidou (€10). With the two-day, €30 card, your fourth museum visit would come at a discount, and every subsequent one woudl be free.
The best perk is you get to skip the interminable lines, which in high season at sights such as the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre can last well over 30 minutes. Just walk right up to a special window, flash your pass, and you're in (at the Louvre, avoid the line snaking from the glass pyramid entrance and head instead to the little-heralded door at 93 rue de Rivoli).
An added benefit: visits are unlimited, which
means you can take a monster of a museum such as the Louvre and split
it up, visiting one wing each day rather than trying (and, trust me, failing)
to tackle it all at once. Or you could keep going back to the Orangerie every afternoon, just to sit for an hour surrounded by 360 degrees of
Monet Waterlilies in the oval basement rooms.
In addition to the big sights of Paris itself, the pass covers 21 major monuments in the surrounding region, including such big ticket (and terribly expensive) items as Versailles, Fontainebleau, and the Châteaux of Vincennes, Chantilly, Rambouillet, Mainsons-Lafitte, and more.
The pass doesn't, of course, cover any special
exhibitions within museums.
The late bird catches the discounts
Sometimes, visiting late in the day can snag you a discount at two major Parisian sights:
The Louvre
The price drops by 1/3 for entry after 6pm on Wednesdays and Fridays. It's free to everyone the first Sunday of the month.... » Full Story
Versailles
The admission for its various buildings and palaces drop by 20% to 30% after 3pm... » Full Story
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This article was last updated in January 2007. All information was accurate at the time.
Copyright © 1998–2008 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.
