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In early 2025, French president Emmanuel Macron announced that the cost of the Louvre Museum’s upcoming restoration would be funded by higher admission prices.
But don’t panic – Paris is a city filled with wallet-friendly culture fixes, and we’re seeing this recent development as the perfect excuse to explore its other equally fascinating (and yes, cheaper) museums.
A top tip: many of them waive admission on certain days (often the first Sunday of every month) so always check the websites to see when admission is free.
In the meantime, we’ve rounded up the ones which are admission-free throughout the year, which means more money for those all-important spending sprees in the museum shop. You’re welcome.
Read more: Inside the six Paris neighbourhoods you should know before visiting
La Maison Élysée
You’ll find the Palais de l’Élysée’s small museum in front of the 18th-century mansion built as a home for France’s presidents. Free to enter and open Tuesday to Saturday, it’s stuffed with items that provide fascinating insights into the presidential household, whether it’s the furniture which fills its halls or the gifts bestowed upon French presidents (including a particularly garish vase presented by the Tunisian government in 2024). Immersive experiences bring the palace’s history to life, and there are regular demonstrations by its craftsmen and women, including gold leaf painters, cabinet-makers and silversmiths.
Don’t miss: the medieval carpenters’ axe, brought out of storage to repair the Notre Dame cathedral’s roof after the fire in 2019.
Fragonard Musée du Parfum
Sniff out this beautiful museum in Paris’s Opéra Garnier neighbourhood, and you’ll discover a mind-bogglingly-wide range of olfactory items from the archives of the Fragonard perfume house, along with a workshop where you can create your own cologne. You’ll be able to check out raw materials, displayed in ancient apothecary bottles and antique cabinets, while archive footage and photos show how the perfume-making process has transformed over the years. One of the most fascinating sections is the one filled with perfume-related objets d’art collected by Jean-François Costa, who took over the company in 1939. These include diamond-adorned perfume bottles from the 1700s and silver pomanders from the 1500s.
Don’t miss: the oldest item in the collection – a bull-shaped stone perfume vase dating back 3,000 BC.
Musee-parfum-paris.fragonard.com
Read more: The best vegan places to eat in Paris, from restaurants to patisseries
Musée Carnavalet
Head to this museum to discover over 600,000 items relating to the history of France, ranging from a prehistoric dugout canoe from 4600 BC to street signs and scale models of its ancient monuments. It’s Paris’s oldest municipal museum, and you’ll find it inside a gorgeous French Renaissance-style mansion built in the 1500s. Upcoming exhibits include Agnès Varda’s Paris, which will focus on the work of the late, legendary French producer and screenwriter.
Don’t miss: Marcel Proust’s bed. Yes, you did read that correctly. The museum has several items owned by the late French novelist, including his bed, chaise longue and table.
Musée-Librairie du Compagnonnage
A beautiful museum focusing on the historic compagnonnage system used to train France’s tradesmen and women, this Saint-Germain-des-Prés museum provides a brilliant insight into a little-known aspect of French society. The first compagnonnage societies emerged in the 1200s, and their members shaped the Paris we know today, reminders of which are this museum’s plans of the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower, and exhibits about people such as Louis Mazerolle, a carpenter who was awarded the esteemed role of Compagnon Charpentier du Devoir in 1864.
Don’t miss: the museum’s bookstore. If ever you wanted to master a certain trade, this is a great place to start.
Petit Palais Musée des Beaux-Arts
This enormous art museum, on the 8th arrondissement, is inside a beaux-arts building constructed in 1900 for Paris’s Exposition Universelle. Its paintings, sculptures and objets d’art include everything from a vast collection of ancient Greek vases to paintings by Courbet, Pissarro, Monet and Cézanne. Highlights include the exhibits relating to decorative arts – head here to admire stunning, priceless glassware from Lalique – and the paintings by Dutch masters (only the Louvre holds a larger collection).
Don’t miss: Claude Monet’s Sunset on the Seine at Lavacourt, Winter Effect, painted in 1880 and regarded as one of the finest examples of impressionist art.
Bourdelle Museum
Don’t get us wrong – Auguste Rodin might well have been one of France’s most famous sculptors, but we’re firm believers that Antoine Bourdelle, a French sculptor credited with leading the shift from Beaux-Arts style to modern sculpture, deserves a chunk of the spotlight. Head to the Bourdelle Museum to see hundreds of plasters, marbles and bronzes carved by this twentieth-century sculptor, and to gain fascinating insights into his work on the Champs-Elysées theatre.
Don’t miss: his lovingly restored former studio, with its cast iron stove, sculpting stand and grinding machine, used by Bourdelle to sharpen his tools.
Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris
Some 15,000 works fill this magnificent museum, handily located between the Champs-Elysées and the Eiffel Tower. There’s a packed calendar of exhibitions – previous ones have focused on Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol – and its diverse collection reflects every type of art discipline, ranging from cubism and abstraction to new realism and kineticism. Alongside paintings by legends such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse are supersized art installations such as House of Horrors, the last large-scale installation produced by American artist Elaine Sturtevant, who died in 2014.
Don’t miss: Elaine Sturtevant’s House of Horrors, one of the museum’s most recent acquisitions. Inspired by a ghost train ride and featuring mind-bending lighting effects and references to drag queen Divine from John Waters’ film Pink Flamingos, it’s an installation that will make all future funfair rides look rather plain.
Read more: The best things to do in Paris, France
