Free Visits in Paris

There are a million ways to spend money is Paris. France is known for its fashion, its food, and most of all, its museums. Therefore, these tips from ReidsGuides for saving money on seeing famous works of art can make dreams of visiting Paris come true. Even more tips are detailed at The Intrepid Traveler: Short on Euros? See Paris for Free.

“The Louvre is free. No, really—and I don’t mean by sneaking in the back door. You just have to know when to go: the first Sunday of every month.
In fact, more than a dozen top sights throw open their doors that Sunday, from the medieval Thermes de Cluny, to the crowd-pleasing Impressionists at the Musée d’Orsay, to the modern art in the Pompidou There’s also a slew of museums dedicated to such greats as Picasso, Rodin, and Delacroix.

Paris has more than its share of famous people who left their hearts—and everything else—here. You can hit the Cimetière de Montemartre (Degas, Offenbach, Truffaut, Dumas) or Cimetière de Montparnasse (Sartre, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Simone de Beauvoir) but hands down the best burial ground in Paris is Père-Lachaise, 108 acres of rolling, wooded parkland where hundreds of cultural giants rest in peace. The short list includes Proust, Molière, Balzac, Oscar Wilde (great Art Deco tomb), Isadora Duncan, Sarah Berhardt, Chopin, Bizet, Edith Piaf, Ingres, Modigliani, and Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (who share a headstone). Doors fans take note: Jim Morrison’s grave is now cordoned off to keep acolytes from scrawling graffiti on surrounding tombs and littering the site with offerings (flowers, cigarettes, bad poetry, booze, and “special” sugar cubes).

For sunset, head to the steps of Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, buy refreshments from an itinerant beer seller hauling plastic pails full of Heineken, and watch the lights twinkle across the city spread out at your feet.”