Paris Travel Guide: Where to Stay, Eat, and What's New for 2026

Three Michelin stars. Arnaud Donckele's Parisian outpost (his La Vague d'Or in Saint-Tropez also has three stars). A sauce-led tasting menu of absurdly fine delicacy — the perfumer-style approach is the metaphor he uses.

On the second floor of Cheval Blanc.

Three Michelin stars under chef Arnaud Faye (formerly of Cap-Eden-Roc). The garden-courtyard dining room is among the most beautiful in Paris — bright, large, less ceremonial than most three-stars. Classic French refinement at its peak.

Bernard Pacaud's three-Michelin-starred temple on Place des Vosges — Pacaud has held three stars for four decades. Understated by 3-star standards, deeply traditional. The truffle-and-foie-gras-stuffed feuilleté dishes are signature.

Three Michelin stars. Pierre Gagnaire's avant-garde French cuisine — multiple plates per course, deconstructive plating, the most inventive presentation in haute cuisine. Hotel Balzac's discreet ground floor.

Three Michelin stars. Kei Kobayashi made history as the first Japanese chef to earn three stars in France. French technique, Japanese precision, vegetable-led plates.

Among the most coveted tables in the city — booking opens months ahead.

Three Michelin stars (promoted in 2025-26 guide). Chef Jérôme Banctel's 'cosmopolitan alchemy' — Breton roots with global influences, signature limewater cooking. Inside La Réserve Hotel near the Champs-Élysées.

Chef Yves Camdeborde's bistronomie pioneer — the restaurant that launched the contemporary-bistro movement in 2005. Tiny, packed, the kind of place you walk past twice before realizing. Lunch is walk-in; dinner is reservations only, booked weeks ahead.

Bertrand Grébaut's restaurant — one Michelin star, on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list for years. The 11th-arrondissement template that every newer bistro copies. Book exactly 3 weeks ahead at 10am sharp.

Christophe Vasseur's bakery — the escargot pastry (snail-shaped, filled with pistachio or chocolate) is the cult item. Old-school painted glass, brass fittings, the most beautiful boulangerie storefront in Paris. Closed weekends.

Sartre and Beauvoir's headquarters. Camus, Picasso, Hemingway all drank here. Touristy now but the kitchen still makes a serious croque-madame, and watching Saint-Germain pass the terrace is the Parisian morning ritual.

The Australian-influenced brunch spot that taught Paris to do brunch properly. Pancakes with bourbon-butter syrup, eggs cooked exactly right, La Cabra coffee. Always a queue at weekends — go on a Wednesday morning.

On the pedestrianised Rue Cler market street — a five-minute walk from the Eiffel Tower. Café crème, fresh croissants from the bakery next door, and a terrace facing the morning market vendors setting up.

The 11th's quietly-perfect morning bookshop-café — sit with proper coffee and a new novel. The kind of independent spot that defines the modern 11th.

Hemingway 'liberated' the Ritz bar in 1944 with a bottle of brandy. Colin Field tended bar here for 26 years and made it world-famous. Tiny — maybe 25 seats — and reservations are impossible.

Walk in at 6:30pm sharp.

World's 50 Best Bars regular, often top-10. The Concept Menu changes annually — each cocktail visualised as art. Cosy, no signage, the kind of Marais bar where locals queue happily.

The Jacques Garcia-designed bar that defined a generation of hotel-bar aesthetic. Low light, deep red velvet, fashion crowd. The Costes music compilations are still the soundtrack.

Tiny Belleville natural-wine bar — bottles you've never heard of, small plates from the open kitchen, the kind of place locals quietly send their friends to. Cash preferred, no reservations.

No menu — you describe a mood, a flavor, a spirit you like, and the bartender invents the drink. The kind of cocktail bar that takes 15 minutes per drink and is worth every minute.

Opened 1911 — the bar that invented (or first served, depending who you ask) the Bloody Mary, the French 75, and the Sidecar. The piano bar downstairs is a separate institution. Photos of patrons going back a century cover every wall.

World's most visited museum, 35,000 objects on display. The Mona Lisa is the headline but the Code of Hammurabi, the Winged Victory, and the Egyptian wing are arguably more rewarding. Plan three hours minimum, more if you have it.

Book online to skip lines.

The world's greatest Impressionist collection — Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhône. In a converted 1900 railway station with the clock window overlooking the Seine. Easier to absorb than the Louvre.

François Pinault's contemporary art collection in Tadao Ando's circular concrete intervention inside the 18th-century Bourse de Commerce. The most architecturally exciting museum opening in Paris this century. Rotating exhibitions from his 10,000-work collection.

Frank Gehry's glass-sailed building in the Bois de Boulogne. Hosts the best blockbuster shows in Paris — Klimt, Monet/Mitchell, Basquiat. The building alone is worth the trip, and the rooftop view across the Bois is the bonus.

Rodin's own hôtel particulier and its garden — The Thinker, The Kiss, The Gates of Hell, all in the setting Rodin actually worked in. The garden alone is worth a ticket. A quiet refuge in the 7th, ten minutes from Les Invalides.

Monet's Water Lilies installed in two oval rooms exactly as he specified — natural light from above, no other paintings, complete immersion. The lower level holds an exceptional small collection of Cézanne, Matisse, Renoir, Modigliani.

Built in 1248 by Louis IX to house Christ's Crown of Thorns. The upper chapel's 15 stained-glass windows — 1,113 scenes from the Bible — are the most spectacular medieval glass surviving anywhere in Europe. Tiny, breathtaking, almost always less crowded than Notre-Dame.

Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Édith Piaf, Chopin, Proust, Sarah Bernhardt — and 70,000 others — buried across 110 acres of cobbled hillside paths. Most atmospheric cemetery in Europe. Pick up a map at the entrance.

The English-language bookshop that's been a literary pilgrimage site since 1951. Beds among the books upstairs (free to writers in exchange for work). The café next door is excellent.

Avoid the queues — go before 11am.

Half outdoor produce market, half covered Beauvau market, plus the brocante (flea market) at the heart. Cheap, chaotic, deeply local — the market the 12th does its shopping at. Most authentic market experience in central Paris.

A 1st-century Roman amphitheatre hidden behind apartment blocks in the Latin Quarter — discovered in 1869, now a city park where locals play boules. Free entry. The least-known Roman ruins in any European capital.

A vast 'Ghetto Museum' on Canal Saint-Martin — café, bar, vintage shop, exhibitions on Afro-Caribbean culture, all in a converted warehouse. Sunday afternoons spill into the canal. Unlike anything else in Paris.

The original elevated park — a 4.7km greenway on a former railway viaduct (1993), the model for New York's High Line. Walks from Bastille toward the Bois de Vincennes through gardens, ponds, and over the rooftops of the 12th.