The Louvre and Notre-Dame anchor opposite ends of central Paris and opposite ends of a museum-versus-monument day, and 2026 changed something about each of them worth knowing before booking either.
The Louvre introduced its first-ever nationality-based pricing in 2026: €22 for EEA residents (the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), €32 for everyone else. Every standard ticket, regardless of price tier, comes with a timed entry slot built in — book online and you get a 30-minute arrival window that routes you past the general queue entirely, the actual skip-the-line mechanism rather than a separate paid add-on. Children under 18 enter free regardless of nationality, and EEA residents aged 18-25 get in free too. The ticket also covers same-day or next-day entry to the nearby Musée national Eugène-Delacroix. Book well ahead — slots for popular dates and times fill up weeks in advance. With limited time, three works cover the essential Louvre: the Mona Lisa (Denon Wing, 1st floor, Room 700), the Venus de Milo (Sully Wing, ground floor, Room 345), and the Winged Victory of Samothrace (Denon Wing, 1st floor, at the top of the Daru Staircase) — all three sit close enough together to hit in under an hour if that's all the time a match day allows. See live rating and reviews on Google Maps
Notre-Dame reopened on 7 December 2024 after the five-and-a-half-year restoration following the 2019 fire, and the cathedral itself is free to enter for everyone. There's no ticket sales system at all — entry runs through a free online reservation system, strongly recommended April through October but not strictly mandatory; walk-ins are accepted. Hours run Monday-Friday 7:50am-7pm, Saturday-Sunday 8:15am-7:30pm, until 10pm on Thursdays, with last entry 30 minutes before closing. The bell towers, reopened separately on 20 September 2025, require their own paid ticket (€16) bought exclusively through the Centre des Monuments Nationaux site — the cathedral's free entry doesn't extend up there. One date is worth flagging directly: the cathedral closes entirely 24-26 September 2026 for a papal visit, a detail that won't affect a May-June 2027 Roland-Garros trip but is worth knowing the cathedral does close for specific events. See live rating and reviews on Google Maps
Both sit close enough to the Seine and to each other that a single day covers both comfortably, museum in the morning, cathedral in the afternoon, or the reverse.
