The Paris Museum Pass is a great value for any Paris visitor who really wants to see the sites. Not only does the pass include “skip the line” privileges that save you from waiting in line after line, it also cuts down on the number of transactions you’ll have to make (and the foreign transaction fees that come with them if you pay by credit card).
I had a Paris Museum Pass for my very first trip to Paris. It’s the closest you can get to being a VIP.
Most of Paris’ must-see attractions are included with the pass: Napoleon’s Tomb at Les Invalides, Notre Dame bell towers, the Picasso Museum (closed until Spring 2013), Conciergerie, and Sainte-Chapelle, L’Orangerie, Centre Pompidou, the Rodin Museum, Arc de Triomphe, the Pantheon, and more. The pass is good for admission to 60 museums, cathedrals, national monuments, and castles. (One notable exception is the Eiffel Tower.)
Click here to buy the Paris Museum Pass and have it mailed to your home before your trip >>
Who Should Buy a Paris Museum Pass?
If you’re visiting Paris in the spring or summer and plan to visit at 5 or 6 museums and monuments, don’t even think of going without a Paris Museum Pass.
If you’ve got limited time in Paris, the museum pass will help you maximize your time seeing the sites and minimizing the time you spend in line. It’s great for longer trips too, because you can revisit the attractions you liked the most an unlimited number of times.
Anyone with museum-hopping plans that include the Louvre or the Musee D’Orsay should buy the Paris Museum Pass. Those two museums notoriously have the longest lines in Paris. You and everyone else on vacation will descend upon the most visited museums in the most visited city in the world at the same time. Being able to skip the line with your pass will make your trip a much more enjoyable experience.
The Paris Museum Pass is valid for the Palace of Versailles and all the building on the grounds as well, but you should decide if it’s worth using up a whole day of your pass for one attraction. (You can buy advance tickets to Versailles separately.)
You can choose a consecutive 2-day, 4-day or 6-day pass, depending on your itinerary.
To get the most value out of the pass, schedule back-to-back visits to a couple of the most popular attractions in Paris while your pass is valid. On Day 1 of a 2-day pass, perhaps you visit the Louvre and the bell towers of Notre Dame. On Day 2, you can go the Orsay Museum, Sainte-Chappelle and La Conciergerie. (Spreading things out this way reduces museum fatigue, too.) Schedule any other Paris activities you wanted to do (shopping, Segway tours, etc.) for the days before or after your Pass is in effect.
When you receive your Paris Museum Pass, print your name in the blanks on the back. (“Nom” means “last name,” and “Prenom” means “first name.”) Don’t fill in the date until you’re ready to activate the pass. Be sure to write the date European style as Day/Month/Year, not Month/Day/Year to avoid any problems getting in with your pass.
