Forgot to Reserve Tickets for Paris’ Main Attractions? These 10 Spots Are Perfect Alternatives

You go to the Louvre for its retrospective of world art from antiquity to modern day. If you don’t have tickets to get in, try the (free!) Petit Palais: Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris instead. This gem of a museum occupies a gorgeous Beaux-Arts “little palace”—an extravaganza of marble, glass, and gilt built for the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris. Inside, paintings, statues, and objets d’art represent Ancient Greece, medieval Europe, the French and Italian Renaissance, 17th-century France and Holland, and more.

Some of the bigger names include Ingres, Rembrandt, Fragonard, Courbet, David—and (although the Louvre doesn’t have these) a slew of Impressionists, including Cézanne, Rodin, Delacroix, Pissarro, Sisley, and… Claude Monet. His “Sunset on the Seine at Lavacourt, Winter Effect” is every bit as magnificent as “Impression: Sunrise,” his legendary painting that gave the Impressionist movement its name. And unlike the overwhelming Louvre, where you’d be lucky if you could see everything in several weeks, you can see everything here in one afternoon.

While the Musée d’Orsay is the world’s go-to for Impressionist art, you’ll need to stand in line for hours if you haven’t planned ahead. So why not head instead to the small and sweet Musée Marmottan Monet in far-west Paris near the Bois de Boulogne? Yes, we know the Musée d’Orsay occupies a former train station, and the architecture is really cool, but the Musée Marmottan Monet is housed in an exquisite 19th-century townhouse that’s every bit as intriguing. The core of the collection is more than 100 works by Monet (compare that to the d’Orsay’s 86!), including iconic masterpieces as well as lesser-known works.

One of the most important paintings in Impressionist history is here: Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise,” painted in 1872, which gave Impressionism its name (note it’s on tour for the 150th Impressionism anniversary through January 2025). You’ll also find an enormous circular room housing several paintings from Monet’s “Waterlilies” series, plus many others. But that’s not all. Here, too, are works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Eugène Boudin, Alfred Sisley, Paul Gauguin, and Gustave Caillebotte—watch for the latter’s instantly recognizable “Paris Street–Rainy Day” from 1877. The world’s most extensive collection of works by Berthe Morisot is here, too; she was one of the few women Impressionists who rarely gets the attention she deserves.

This newly opened house museum, less than an hour outside Paris via RER D, is often called the “Other Giverny.” While it could never match Giverny’s flower-filled gardens and lily pond, its extensive planted grounds (with tucked away “follies”) are breathtaking, nonetheless. It’s the childhood home of Gustave Caillebotte, an Impressionist who, in recent years, is gaining the recognition that evaded him—probably because he died young, at age 45. He’s one of the few artists who actually had money and, in fact, financially supported many of the struggling artists, including Claude Monet. You can visit the house, whose sumptuously decorated rooms depict the life of a well-to-do 19th-century family. Caillebotte was also a boat designer, and he raced them—explaining why many of his most renowned paintings depict boaters on regional waterways, including the River Yerre, which runs through the house’s property.

While everyone will rush to visit Notre Dame in late 2024 when the fire-ravaged cathedral finally reopens, there’s another visiting option until then—and even after, for the crowd averse. Take the Metro Line 13 to the northern suburb of St.-Denis, to the Basilique de St.-Denis. Entering this one-towered church (its North Tower, dismantled in 1837, currently is being reconstructed through 2030), you’ll do a double-take: It’s a photographic twin of Notre Dame in its Gothic elegance. There’s a reason: A fervent 12th-century abbot named Suger was determined to build stained-glass windows into his church, hoping to exalt God in a larger, airier space (and drawing more worshipers)—an impossibility given the architectural capabilities of the day. But he figured out how to use revolutionary rib vaults, high-pointed arches, and flying buttresses to support massive walls of stained-glass windows that cast dappled colored light on a dramatic, heaven-reaching interior. His St.-Denis was completed in 1144, making it the world’s first Gothic church (construction on Notre Dame began in 1163).

The running blague (joke) is that Tour Montparnasse offers the prettiest views in Paris—expressly because it’s the only place you can’t see the glass-and-steel skyscraper itself. Parisians have long considered this 59-story monolith, built in 1973 in the Montparnasse district in south-central Paris, an eyesore; it is, after all, the only skyscraper in a city of elegant, harmonious architecture. But you can’t deny that the towering office building offers the highest views over Paris. An elevator whisks you up to the 56^th-floor observation platform in 38 seconds flat, where views spread out as far as 25 miles in every direction, including the Eiffel Tower. There’s also an open-air rooftop terrace on the 59th floor (accessible only by stairs). The tower is open until 11:30 p.m. in summer, and you can order champagne and watch the Eiffel Tower’s light show from afar—one thing you absolutely cannot do from the more famous tower.

Montmartre is the quintessential artist village topped by Sacré-Coeur (later incorporated into Paris), drawing hordes of tourists to watch artists paint at Place du Tertre and revel in the artistic spirits of Picasso, Van Gogh, Renoir, Suzanne Valadon, and other former residents. Well, there’s another artist village that’s much less crowded and perhaps even more quintessential. Auvers-sur-Oise, about 38 minutes north of Paris via train from the Gare du Nord, is a country village where many of the Impressionists lived and worked. The townscape looks almost exactly as it did when the easel-porting artists roamed its lanes, and you’ll recognize the sites of many famous paintings. Probably the most famous artist-in-residence was Vincent Van Gogh, who spent 90 days furiously painting the church, the wheat fields, and even his doctor’s portrait before dying by suicide on July 29, 1890. Auberge Ravoux, where he stayed—and died—is still there, restored to look exactly as it did in his day, down to the small corner table where he ate his meals. Touristy Montmartre doesn’t give you that.

Gliding along the Seine River, taking in the monuments along the way, is a fabulous way to see the best of Paris. It’s also one of the most crowded—and touristy. Instead, hop aboard a glass-sided barge on the Canal St.-Martin and explore lesser-known Parisian neighborhoods. The trip kicks off with a plunge into the dark, dank tunnel beneath Place de la Bastille—where victims of the 1830 revolution, as well as Egyptian mummies brought back during Napoléon’s reign, are buried in an underground crypt. You emerge on the other side, delving into one after another residential quartier filled with neoclassical row houses, plane trees, and parks. Along the way, the barge negotiates four double locks and two iron swing bridges, seemingly a world away from the modern city. The 2.5-hour tour’s endpoints are the Paris-Arsenal Marina and the Bassin de la Villette.

Admittedly, you can’t really compete with the dazzling stained-glass windows of 13th-century Sainte-Chapelle, Louis IX’s royal palace on the Ile-de-la Cité that once housed the Crown of Thorns and a fragment of the True Cross. But Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in the ancient neighborhood of the same name, is surprising in its own way—and you can walk right in without waiting in line (or paying). This Romanesque church, founded in 543 (making it Paris’ oldest church—elements of its current structure date from as early as the 10^th century), once reigned in the thriving heart of a village famed for its gilded illuminations. But what’s most astounding is that, unlike most buildings its age, Saint-Germain’s nave retains its spectacular, exuberant colors—deep reds, blues, and greens that elicit an oh la vache! (holy cow) upon entering. Opulent murals and frescoes depicting important historical and religious figures cover its massive walls, while mosaic tiles make the floors gleam. Look up to see the periwinkle-blue ceiling dotted with heavenly gold stars and stained-glass windows that literally sing out the praises of color. Oh, la vache, indeed.

The crowds know Les Deux Magots’s literary and artistic history, explaining why, even if you wanted to pay the jacked-up prices, it’s virtually impossible to get a table at this celebrated café in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood. Indeed, this is where Ernest Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre, among others, once chatted about philosophy and art over coffee. But this isn’t the only place that writers and artists hung out. In time, they moved to the less expensive Montparnasse neighborhood, where they found new cafés. Among them is La Rotonde, which opened in 1911 and remains an atmosphere-filled brasserie. Sartre often spent hours here conversing with fellow intellectuals. Hemingway even mentions the café in chapter VI of The Sun Also Rises: “The taxi stopped in front of the Rotonde. No matter what café in Montparnasse you ask a taxi-driver to bring you to from the right bank of the river, they always take you to the Rotonde.” Just don’t tell Les Deux Magots’ patrons, lest they throng here too.

Before there was Versailles, there was Vaux-le-Vicomte, about 35 miles south of Paris. Nicolas Fouquet, one of Louis XIV’s ministers in the mid-1600s, hired the finest artisans of the day—including architect Louis Le Vau, painter Charles Le Brun, and landscape architect André Le Nôtre—to design this spectacular baroque château and gardens. He was so proud of it that he organized a grand fête with a feast served on gold and silver plates, a new play written and performed by Molière, and fireworks—to which he invited the king himself. Well, when 22-year-old King Louis XIV saw the beauty of this place, he wanted it. So, he took it. He arrested Fouquet and, after the trial of the century, threw him in prison, then not only seized the château and all of its treasures but also stole all of his ideas, using the same team to build an even more lavish residence: Versailles. Today, a visit to this lavish château, filled with period paintings, sculptures, furnishings, and tapestries, serves as a chilling reminder of the malice of power.