Places to visit in Île-de-France, France
42 places to visit in Île-de-France, France, each with LOQAH's carefully crafted stamp of its own: Eiffel Tower, Louvre Museum, Notre-Dame de Paris and more. Stand at any of them with the app open and the stamp is yours, confirmed on site, in your Île-de-France volume.
5 UNESCO World Heritage sites · 33 Famous places to visit · 4 Hidden gems
UNESCO World Heritage sites in Île-de-France (5)
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Eiffel Tower
A wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars, built by Gustave Eiffel's company between 1887 and 1889 for the World's Fair. Meant to stand for only twenty years, it became the outline of Paris itself, and its top floor looks out over the whole city and the Seine.
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Louvre Museum
The world's most visited art museum, housed in a royal palace on the Right Bank of the Seine. It holds the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory, and in its basement the stone footings of the medieval fortress built under Philip II can still be seen.
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Notre-Dame de Paris
A medieval Gothic cathedral on the Île de la Cité, seat of the Archbishop of Paris. Its twin towers, flying buttresses and rose windows have watched over the Seine for more than eight centuries, and it reopened in 2024 after years of restoration.
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Palace of Fontainebleau
One of the largest royal châteaux in France, a hunting lodge and autumn home to monarchs from Louis VII to Napoleon III. It became a national museum in 1927 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981, and is surrounded by the great forest of Fontainebleau.
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Palace of Versailles
The principal residence of Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI, southwest of Paris. Its Hall of Mirrors, gilded state rooms and vast formal gardens set the model for royal palaces across Europe.
Famous places to visit in Île-de-France (33)
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Arc de Triomphe
A triumphal arch at the head of the Champs-Élysées, where twelve avenues meet in a star. Commissioned by Napoleon to honour those who fought for France, it carries the names of victories and generals, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier lies beneath its vault.
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Bois de Boulogne
A large public park on the western edge of Paris, given to the city by Napoleon III in 1852. It has lakes for rowing, woodland paths, the rose garden of Bagatelle and the racecourses of Longchamp and Auteuil.
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Catacombs of Paris
Underground ossuaries in old stone quarries beneath the city, holding the remains of more than six million people. The bones were moved here from the overflowing cemeteries of Paris from the late 18th century, and they are stacked into walls along the dim passages.
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Centre Pompidou
A building worn inside out, its pipes, ducts and escalators painted in bright colours on the outside, designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. Locals call it Beaubourg, and it holds one of the largest collections of modern art in Europe.
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Champs-Élysées
An avenue 1.9 kilometres long and 70 metres wide, running from the Place de la Concorde up to the Arc de Triomphe. Lined with cafés, theatres and luxury shops, it is where the Tour de France finishes and where the Bastille Day parade marches each July.
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Conciergerie
A former courthouse and prison on the Île de la Cité that began as part of the medieval royal palace, alongside the Sainte-Chapelle. Two great Gothic halls survive from that palace, and Marie Antoinette was held here in her last days.
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Disneyland Park
The first of the two parks at Disneyland Paris, opened on 12 April 1992 and laid out much like the original in California. Sleeping Beauty Castle stands at its centre, and its lands are given over to fairy tales and Disney characters.
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Grande Arche
A hollow cube of an arch in the business district of La Défense, finished in 1989 for the bicentenary of the French Revolution. It lines up with the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre along the city's historic axis, and is large enough that Notre-Dame could sit inside.
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Latin Quarter
A district on the Left Bank around the Sorbonne, named for the Latin once spoken by its students. Spread over the 5th and 6th arrondissements, it is a maze of literary shops, cafés and old university buildings.
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Le Marais
A historic district across the 3rd and 4th arrondissements of the Right Bank, once home to the aristocracy. Its narrow streets of old mansions now hold galleries, boutiques, falafel shops and some of the city's best small museums.
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Les Invalides
A vast complex founded by Louis XIV as a home for old and wounded soldiers, which still houses veterans alongside the Musée de l'Armée. Its gilded dome rises over the tomb of Napoleon, one of the great landmarks of the Left Bank.
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Louis Vuitton Foundation
An art museum and cultural centre at the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, sponsored by LVMH. Its building by Frank Gehry is wrapped in great curved sails of glass, and it shows modern and contemporary art in changing exhibitions.
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Luxembourg Gardens
A formal garden in the 6th arrondissement, laid out for Marie de' Medici around the palace that now houses the French Senate. Parisians come for the chairs by its octagonal pond, its tree-lined walks and the toy sailboats children push across the water.
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Montmartre
A 130-metre hill in the north of Paris that gives its name to the district around it. Known for its artists, its cabarets and the white basilica on its summit, it still has steep cobbled lanes, long flights of steps and painters at work on the Place du Tertre.
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Montparnasse Tower
A 210-metre office skyscraper built from 1969 to 1973, still the tallest building in Paris proper. Its open-air terrace at the top gives one of the best views of the city, with the Eiffel Tower in the frame.
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Moulin Rouge
A cabaret on the Boulevard de Clichy at the Place Blanche, with a red windmill on its roof. It opened in 1889 at the foot of Montmartre, and the cancan is still danced in its nightly revue.
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Musée Rodin
A museum in the Hôtel Biron, the mansion where Auguste Rodin worked, opened in 1919 to show his sculpture. The Thinker and The Gates of Hell stand in its rose garden, and the collection runs to 6,600 sculptures and thousands of drawings.
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Musée d'Orsay
A museum in a Beaux-Arts railway station on the Left Bank, built from 1898 to 1900 and opened as a museum in 1986. It holds the world's largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art, from Monet and Renoir to Degas, Cézanne and van Gogh.
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Musée de l'Orangerie
A gallery in the west corner of the Tuileries Garden, best known as the permanent home of Claude Monet's eight great Water Lilies murals, hung in two oval rooms. Downstairs are works by Cézanne, Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso and Renoir.
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Musée du Quai Branly
A museum by Jean Nouvel devoted to the indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. Of its more than a million objects about 3,500 are on show at any time, and one of its outer walls is a living garden of plants beside the Seine.
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Palais Garnier
An opera house of 1,979 seats, built for the Paris Opera between 1861 and 1875 at the behest of Napoleon III. Behind its gilded façade lie a grand marble staircase and an auditorium with a ceiling painted by Marc Chagall.
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Palais de Chaillot
Two curving wings on Chaillot Hill, built for the 1937 World's Fair and now home to museums and a theatre. The terrace between them, at the Trocadéro, gives the classic view across the Seine to the Eiffel Tower.
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Panthéon
Built between 1758 and 1790 as a church for Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, it became a resting place for the nation's great figures. Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Marie Curie lie in the crypt beneath its dome on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève.
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Place de la Concorde
The largest square in Paris, 7.6 hectares at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées. At its centre stands an Egyptian obelisk from Luxor, more than 3,000 years old, flanked by two grand fountains.
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Place des Vosges
The oldest planned square in Paris, laid out in the Marais in the early 17th century as the Place Royale. Matching red-brick houses with arcades enclose a garden of trees and fountains, and Victor Hugo once lived at number 6.
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Pont Alexandre III
The most ornate bridge in Paris, a single steel arch across the Seine with gilded statues on tall pillars at each end. It links the Champs-Élysées quarter with the Invalides, and its lamps and cherubs make it a favourite place for photographs.
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Père Lachaise Cemetery
The largest cemetery in Paris, 44 hectares of cobbled lanes, old trees and carved tombs on a hillside in the east of the city. Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Édith Piaf and Jim Morrison are among those buried here.
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Sacré-Cœur Basilica
A white-domed basilica on the summit of Montmartre, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Built of a stone that stays pale as it weathers, it looks down over all of Paris from the highest point in the city.
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Sainte-Chapelle
A royal chapel on the Île de la Cité, built between 1238 and 1248 for King Louis IX to house the Crown of Thorns. Its upper chapel is walled almost entirely in stained glass, so that on a bright day the whole room glows with colour.
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Shakespeare and Company
A shop of English-language literature on the Left Bank, opened in 1951 by George Whitman across the river from Notre-Dame. Its crammed shelves and reading nooks have long given beds to young writers who help out in the shop.
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Tuileries Garden
A public garden between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, created by Catherine de' Medici in 1564 for a palace that no longer stands. Opened to the public in 1667, it has been a place for Parisians to stroll, meet and sit by its fountains ever since.
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Île Saint-Louis
A quiet island of eleven hectares in the Seine, joined to both banks by four bridges and to the Île de la Cité by a footbridge. Its streets of 17th-century townhouses are known for their ice cream shops, Berthillon above all.
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Île de la Cité
One of two natural islands in the Seine and the place where Paris began. Clovis I, first King of the Franks, set up his castle here in 508, and today its 22.5 hectares hold Notre-Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle and the Conciergerie.
Hidden gems in Île-de-France (4)
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Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie
The largest science museum in Europe, set in the Parc de la Villette in the north-east of the city. Next to it sits the Géode, a mirrored sphere that holds a dome cinema.
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Jardin des Plantes
The main botanical garden in France, founded in the 17th century as the royal garden of medicinal plants. Its grounds by the Seine hold glasshouses, a small zoo and the galleries of the Natural History Museum.
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Musée Picasso
A museum in the Hôtel Salé, a 17th-century mansion in the Marais, devoted to Pablo Picasso. It holds more than 5,000 of his works, from paintings and sculpture to ceramics and notebooks, along with pieces from his own archive.
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Passage Brady
An iron-and-glass covered arcade in the 10th arrondissement, built in 1828. Known as Little India, it is lined with Indian and Pakistani restaurants and spice shops, a corner of Paris that smells of curry leaves and cardamom.
Collecting in Île-de-France
What are the best places to visit in Île-de-France?
LOQAH lists 42 places in Île-de-France. The best known include Eiffel Tower, Louvre Museum, Notre-Dame de Paris, Palace of Fontainebleau and Palace of Versailles. Each has a stamp of its own to collect when you are there.
How many LOQAH stamps are there in Île-de-France?
42, and more are added over time. Each place has LOQAH's carefully crafted stamp of its own.
How do I collect a stamp in Île-de-France?
Open LOQAH at the place and get its stamp. LOQAH checks where you are once, at that moment; at the place itself the stamp is confirmed on site, with a gold badge.
I have been to places in Île-de-France before. Can I add them?
Yes. In Earlier trips, choose Île-de-France and swipe through its stamps, or import your Google Timeline. Each one goes into your volume with the date, if you know it.
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