Paris, France

Self-guided audio walking tour of Paris

51 hand-checked places and 2 walking routes. aiGuide notices where you are and tells you each place's story as you walk past, so you can keep your phone in your pocket.

Island, Louvre, and Concorde

11 stops · about 90 min · 4.2 km

This default walk follows Paris's sacred and royal spine from Île de la Cité to the Louvre, Tuileries, and Concorde. It gives the strongest ninety minutes of medieval, royal, and revolutionary Paris in one sequence.

1. 1.Notre-Dame de Paris

   High Gothic, 12th-14th centuries

   Paris's great Gothic cathedral on Île de la Cité, begun in 1163 and long the city's religious and visual center.

2. 2.Sainte-Chapelle

   Rayonnant Gothic, 13th century

   Louis IX's jewel-box royal chapel, consecrated in 1248 and famed for some of the most dazzling stained glass in Europe.

3. 3.Conciergerie

   Medieval monarchy to French Revolution, 14th-18th centuries

   The surviving riverside remnant of the medieval royal palace, later transformed into Paris's most notorious Revolutionary prison.

4. 4.Pont Neuf

   Early modern Paris, late 16th-early 17th centuries

   Despite its name, the New Bridge is the oldest standing bridge across the Seine in Paris, completed in 1607.

5. 5.Place Dauphine

   Early modern Paris, early 17th century

   Henry IV's elegant triangular square of 1607, tucked beside Pont Neuf at the western end of Île de la Cité.

6. 6.Square du Vert-Galant

   19th-century park on a medieval river site

   A small riverside park at the tip of Île de la Cité, named for Henry IV and poised beneath Pont Neuf.

7. 7.Pont des Arts

   First Empire origins with late 20th-century reconstruction

   A pedestrian bridge linking the Louvre and Institut de France, famed for its views and its modern afterlife as a promenade.

8. 8.Musée du Louvre

   Medieval fortress to royal palace to museum, 12th century onward

   The Louvre is both the world's most visited art museum and a former royal palace layered over centuries of French power.

9. 9.Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel

   First Empire, early 19th century

   Napoleon's compact triumphal arch of 1806-1808 once stood before the Tuileries Palace and opens the historic axis westward.

10. 10.Jardin des Tuileries

    Royal garden from the 16th century with 17th-century redesign

    The formal garden of the vanished Tuileries Palace still stages one of Paris's grandest royal and republican promenades.

11. 11.Place de la Concorde

    Royal square transformed by Revolution and 19th-century redesign

    Paris's largest historic square condenses monarchy, Revolution, empire, and modern spectacle around the Luxor Obelisk.

Latin Quarter and Left Bank

10 stops · about 80 min · 3.9 km

This route moves from Roman Lutetia and saintly memory through the schools and churches of the Left Bank. It balances archaeology, scholarship, gardens, and some of Paris's richest church interiors.

1. 1.Panthéon

   Late 18th century to modern national memory

   Soufflot's great domed monument began as a church to Saint Geneviève and became France's civic mausoleum.

2. 2.Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont

   Late Gothic and Renaissance, 15th-17th centuries

   A richly layered church near the Panthéon, famous for Saint Geneviève, Pascal, Racine, and Paris's only surviving rood screen.

3. 3.Arènes de Lutèce

   Roman Empire, 1st century AD

   The remains of Lutetia's Roman amphitheatre preserve a rare glimpse of ancient entertainment in the modern city.

4. 4.Musée de Cluny

   Roman remains and late medieval architecture

   Paris's museum of the Middle Ages combines a late medieval abbots' mansion with surviving Roman baths.

5. 5.Fontaine Saint-Michel

   Second Empire, 19th century

   Davioud's theatrical fountain of 1858-1860 anchors Place Saint-Michel with Saint Michael triumphing over the devil.

6. 6.Église Saint-Germain-des-Prés

   Merovingian origins with Romanesque and Gothic survival

   The former abbey church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés preserves some of the oldest standing church fabric in Paris.

7. 7.Église Saint-Sulpice

   Baroque and later additions, 17th-19th centuries

   Paris's second-largest church is a long-built masterpiece of Baroque scale, liturgy, organ culture, and unfinished symmetry.

8. 8.Jardin du Luxembourg

   Early modern origins with later redesigns, 17th-19th centuries

   Marie de' Medici's grand garden, begun in 1612, remains the Left Bank's most elegant landscape of promenades, ponds, and statues.

9. 9.Palais du Luxembourg

   Early modern palace, 17th century with 19th-century political adaptation

   Marie de' Medici's palace became, after Revolution and remodeling, the enduring home of France's Senate.

10. 10.Institut de France

    Baroque institutional architecture, 17th century onward

    The domed former Collège des Quatre-Nations became the headquarters of France's most prestigious learned academies.