3 Rainy Days in Paris

It rains in Paris on about one day in three, and the city was built for it. Its great museums are among the largest buildings in Europe, its nineteenth-century shoppers walked from one covered passage to the next without getting wet, and its department stores and food halls are destinations in their own right. Three wet days in Paris are not a ruined trip; with the right plan they are three days of the best indoor sights in the world.

Day 1 is the Right Bank: the Louvre in the morning, then the covered passages, the Palais Garnier and the glass dome of Galeries Lafayette, all within a short walk under cover. Day 2 is the Left Bank: the Musée d'Orsay, then Le Bon Marché and its food hall, and Saint-Sulpice. Day 3 goes underground into the Catacombs and the Resistance bunker of the Musée de la Libération, and up to the top of the Montparnasse Tower, which in low cloud becomes a strange, quiet world above the rain.

The arrival day is for dinner in a covered market or a brasserie. The three days can go in any order: the Louvre closes on Tuesdays, the Orsay, the Catacombs and the Musée de la Libération on Mondays.

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This route at a glance

Tickets to book before you fly

On rainy days the queues are longer everywhere, so every timed ticket counts. Prices start at the figures shown, per person.

Arrival evening: a covered market or a brasserie

On a wet first evening, eat under a roof with atmosphere. The Marché des Enfants Rouges in the northern Marais has food stalls at shared tables under cover, and the great brasseries of Paris, with their mirrors, brass and white tablecloths, were made for rainy nights.

Buy a proper umbrella from a shop rather than the street sellers at metro exits; the cheap ones rarely survive a Paris gust.

• Brasseries serve late and all evening, without a booking on weekdays.
• Most metro stations have covered exits; check which one is closest to your hotel door.
• A light waterproof jacket is more useful than an umbrella in crowded museums.

Day 1: The Louvre, the covered passages, the Opéra and a glass dome

Start at the Louvre at 9:30 with a reserved entry and a guide, and stay inside until lunch: the museum is so large that a rainy morning there feels like a holiday. Eat at one of the cafés in the museum or under the arcades of the Palais-Royal next door, then walk north through the Galerie Vivienne and the Passage des Panoramas, two of the covered passages that Paris built for rainy days in the early nineteenth century.

From the Passage des Panoramas, it is a five-minute walk to the Palais Garnier. The opera house is a world of its own: a grand staircase of colored marble, the gilded Grand Foyer, the library-museum and, if no rehearsal is on, the auditorium under Chagall's ceiling. Allow an hour and a half.

Finish next door at Galeries Lafayette. Its Art Nouveau dome of colored glass is one of the great sights of Paris, and the glass walkway that projects under it gives you a view straight down to the perfume counters. The food hall in the Lafayette Gourmet building has counters for an early dinner without going outside again.

Stops in order

1. 9:30 · Louvre Museum: reserved entry with a guide, stay until lunch
   Pont du Carrousel, 75001, Paris
2. 13:00 · Palais-Royal Garden: lunch under the arcades
   Passage du Perron, 75001, Paris
3. 14:00 · Galerie Vivienne: covered passage
   Rue des Petits Champs, 75001, Paris
4. 14:30 · Passage des Panoramas: covered passage
   Passage des Panoramas, 75002, Paris
5. 15:00 · Palais Garnier: the staircase, foyer and auditorium
   Place Jacques Rouché, 75009, Paris
6. 17:00 · Galeries Lafayette: the glass dome and the food hall
   40 Boulevard Haussmann, 75009, Paris

The numbers for this day

💡 Pro Tip

Use the underground entrance to the Louvre

On rainy days the pyramid queue stands in the open. The entrance through the Carrousel du Louvre, from the rue de Rivoli, is underground and dry; with a timed ticket it is usually quicker too.

Pro tip by: Alesia Vakula

Travel expert and itinerary planning specialist

If it rains: This is the rainy-day plan; every stop is under cover and the longest walk outdoors is five minutes.

Day 2: Orsay, Le Bon Marché and Saint-Sulpice

The Musée d'Orsay, in a former railway station, is the perfect rainy-day museum: you can spend three hours under its great glass vault with the Impressionists, the Post-Impressionists and the sculpture hall. Have lunch in the restaurant on the second floor, with its painted ceilings and chandeliers, or at the café behind the giant station clock, where the rain streams down the glass face.

Take the metro two stops to Le Bon Marché, the oldest department store in Paris, with its iron and glass atrium and its escalators designed as part of the architecture. Next door, La Grande Épicerie is a food hall of extraordinary quality, the best place in Paris for a rainy afternoon of browsing chocolates, cheeses and wines.

Walk five minutes to Saint-Sulpice, the second-largest church in Paris, for Delacroix's murals of Jacob wrestling with the angel in the first chapel on the right and one of the greatest organs in the world. End the day in one of the bookshops or cafés around the church.

Stops in order

1. 9:30 · Musée d'Orsay: three hours under the glass vault
   1 Rue de la Légion d'Honneur, 75007, Paris
2. 14:00 · Le Bon Marché: the oldest department store in Paris
   Rue du Bac, 75007, Paris
3. 15:30 · La Grande Épicerie: the food hall next door
   38 Rue de Sèvres, 75007 Paris
4. 17:00 · Saint-Sulpice: Delacroix's murals, free
   2 Rue Palatine, 75006, Paris

The numbers for this day

💡 Pro Tip

Lunch in the Orsay restaurant, not a café outside

The museum's main restaurant is in the station's old hotel dining room, with gilded ceilings and chandeliers. On a wet day it saves a soaking, and it is one of the most beautiful rooms in the city.

Pro tip by: Alesia Vakula

Travel expert and itinerary planning specialist

If it rains: All indoors; the only outdoor stretch is the short walk from Le Bon Marché to Saint-Sulpice.

Day 3: The Catacombs, a Resistance bunker and above the clouds at Montparnasse

Go underground in the Catacombs: 131 steps down into the old quarries, a kilometer and a half of tunnels lined with the bones of six million Parisians, and 112 steps back up. It is 14 °C down there in every season, and the weather above makes no difference at all.

You come up close to the Place Denfert-Rochereau, where the Musée de la Libération de Paris tells the story of the city under occupation and ends with a descent of a hundred steps into the bunker from which the Resistance directed the uprising of August 1944. It closes on Mondays, like the Catacombs.

In the afternoon, ride to the Montparnasse Tower and take the lift to the 56th floor. In rain, the panorama behind the glass is dramatic: clouds racing over the rooftops, sudden shafts of light on the Eiffel Tower and the Seine. Then have a long dinner at La Coupole, the Art Deco brasserie on the boulevard du Montparnasse.

Stops in order

1. 9:45 · Catacombs of Paris: about an hour underground
   1 Avenue du Colonel Henri Rol Tanguy, 75014, Paris
2. 11:30 · Musée de la Libération: museum and Resistance bunker
   4 Avenue du Colonel Henri Rol Tanguy, 75014, Paris
3. 16:00 · Montparnasse Tower: the 56th floor behind glass
   Rue du Départ, 75015, Paris
4. 19:00 · La Coupole: dinner at the Art Deco brasserie
   102 Boulevard du Montparnasse, 75014, Paris

The numbers for this day

💡 Pro Tip

Skip the Montparnasse roof in rain, keep the 56th floor

The open roof terrace above the observation deck closes or empties in bad weather, but the 56th floor is fully glazed. In low cloud you sometimes look down on the top of the cloud layer, which is unforgettable.

Pro tip by: Alesia Vakula

Travel expert and itinerary planning specialist

If it rains: This day is built for rain: two underground visits and an indoor viewpoint.

Departure morning in the rain

Take the metro or a taxi straight from the hotel; on a wet morning, Paris traffic slows and taxis are hard to find, so book one the evening before if you need it.

If you have a free hour, the Musée de la Vie romantique at the foot of Montmartre and the covered passages near the Grands Boulevards are close to the Gare du Nord and the Gare Saint-Lazare.

• Book the airport taxi the night before on a rainy day.
• Leave earlier than usual: traffic slows in the rain.
• Allow plenty of time for an international flight.

Which day goes where

The three days can run in any order. Use this table to keep every sight off its closing day.

The best indoor places in Paris for rainy days

Paris has more great indoor sights than any visitor can see in three days. The table lists the ones on this route, with how long you can comfortably spend in each without going outside.

💡 Pro Tip

Keep a rainy-day ticket in reserve

If the forecast is uncertain, book the outdoor plans for the morning and keep an indoor ticket, such as the Montparnasse Tower or the Palais Garnier, for the afternoon. In Paris the weather often changes at midday.

Pro tip by: Alesia Vakula

Travel expert and itinerary planning specialist

What to wear for rainy Paris

• A waterproof jacket with a hood is easier in museums and the metro than an umbrella.
• Waterproof shoes matter more than anything else; cobblestones are slippery and puddles deep.
• A small bag: museums ask you to leave large bags and wet umbrellas in the cloakroom.
• Layers: museums are warm and the metro is humid, so take off the outer layer inside.

More 3-day routes

• Paris in winter: short days used well, with ice rinks and long dinners.
• Hidden Paris: more covered passages and the Musée Grévin.
• Paris for art lovers: a museum route that ignores the weather entirely.
• Paris with kids: the Cité des Sciences and other rainy-day ideas for families.
• The best time for 3 days in Paris: the driest months.
• 4 days in Paris: a fourth day to wait out a wet spell.
• All the 3-day routes, by theme