Paris 4-Night, 6-Day Model Plan: The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Versailles
AuthorMIRUTOBE editors
Table of Contents9 items
- Itinerary
- DAY 1 Choosing the departure weekday settles half of what this trip contains
- DAY 2 From the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe, east to west on line 1
- DAY 3 Down from the hill, through the Impressionists, onto the river
- DAY 4 The palace-only ticket at Versailles disappeared in 2026
- DAY 5-6 The last half day is decided by the arithmetic to the airport
- Alternatives
- Where to stay
- What this trip costs
Four nights in Paris built around three collections, the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and Versailles. On the ground the two of you spend EUR 311.90. The first decision here is not where to go but which weekday to fly: leave Japan on a Friday, Saturday or Monday and one of the three is shut.
Itinerary
DAY 1Choosing the departure weekday settles half of what this trip contains
Why this order: day one ends with the travelling. Nothing that needs a booking goes on the arrival day, and the jet lag meets a view you can walk to from the hotel.
What breaks plans in Paris is neither the weather nor the crime. It is closing days. The Louvre shuts on Tuesdays, the Musée d’Orsay on Mondays and Versailles on Mondays, all stated on their own sites, and every guide carries that much. The arithmetic after it is the part that matters: which of the three you lose is decided automatically by the weekday you leave Japan.
This route puts the Louvre on day two, the Orsay on day three and Versailles on day four. Day one is an evening arrival spent travelling, so day two is the day after departure, day three two days after and day four three. Of the seven possible departure weekdays, only four dodge all three closures at once.
Three fail: Monday, Friday and Saturday. The awkward part is that Friday and Saturday are the two departures easiest for anyone with a job to book. Take the Friday flight without thinking and you give up either Versailles out in the suburbs or the Impressionists at the Orsay, whole.
Among the four that work, Tuesday and Thursday come with something extra. Leaving on a Tuesday puts the Orsay on a Thursday, the one day it stays open to 21:45 rather than closing at 18:00, and after 18:00 on that day the admission drops from EUR 16 to EUR 12. Leaving on a Thursday puts the Louvre on a Friday, and the Louvre runs to 21:00 on Wednesdays and Fridays. Either way a large museum gets visited when the crowd has thinned, which makes the same four nights denser.
If only a Friday, Saturday or Monday is available, absorb it by reordering. On a Saturday departure, where day three lands on a Monday, make day three a city day of Montmartre and the Seine cruise and move the Orsay to the afternoon of day two. The Louvre and the Orsay end up on the same date, but both work as two or three hours with a narrowed list. The same idea applies in London, where in the London four-night plan the guard-change weekdays and the market’s closing day do the same job. Building a short European itinerary, listing the closures first is quicker than listing the sights.
Afternoon: there is exactly one ticket type that differs for the airport
Non-stop flights from Japan land at Charles de Gaulle in the evening, and the RER B covers the run into the city in around 40 minutes. One thing needs care here. The Paris single ticket has become a flat EUR 2.55 across the whole of Île-de-France, and the airport is the exception. Travel between the airports and the city uses a separate ticket, the Ticket Paris Région to Aéroports, at EUR 14 a journey.
Put the other way round, any journey that does not touch an airport is EUR 2.55 however far it goes. There is no longer any zone arithmetic to do. Versailles on day four is inside Île-de-France, so the RER C there is EUR 2.55 as well. The Navigo Jour day ticket is EUR 12.30 and only pays on a day of more than five singles, which is EUR 12.75. No day in this route uses the metro five times, so buying singles as you go is cheaper.
Entry procedure has changed over the past two years as well. A Japanese passport needs no visa for 90 days in any 180 under the Schengen rules, but the EES border system went to full operation on 10 April 2026, and fingerprints and a facial image are now actually taken on entry. ETIAS, the electronic travel authorisation, is expected in the fourth quarter of 2026 and the European Commission has not yet published a start date. On dates near the end of the year, check whether it has begun before you book.
Night: do not go up the tower; look at the whole of it from the Trocadéro
Drop the bags and go straight to the Eiffel Tower, but not up it. Spending a EUR 36.70 summit ticket at the hour your judgement is at its worst, after the flight and the transfer, is a waste of it.
Highlights: the 330-metre tower switches to its golden floodlighting after sunset and flashes white for five minutes on every hour. That five minutes, the champagne flash, repeats until midnight or 1am depending on the season. The Trocadéro is on high ground across the Seine and is one of the few places where the tower fits into a single frame from its feet to its tip. The climb goes on day five; tonight is the whole of it from a distance.
Practical note: take a position on the upper steps of the square five minutes before the hour and you are not hunting for a spot once the flashing starts. Looking at it from the ground costs nothing.
- Nearest
- Trocadéro on the metro
- Admission
- Lift to the summit EUR 36.70; lift to the second floor EUR 23.50; stairs to the second floor EUR 14.80
- Hours
- 9:30–23:00 (last ascent 22:45)
The stairs to the second floor are EUR 14.80, close to EUR 9 under the EUR 23.50 lift. There are 670 steps. To reach the summit while keeping the cost down, there is also a EUR 28.00 combination, stairs to the second floor and the lift from there.
DAY 2From the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe, east to west on line 1
Why this order: metro line 1 strings the Louvre, the Concorde, the Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe in a straight line. No changes, and the afternoon covers ground on foot.
The centre of Paris is skewered by metro line 1. Palais Royal – Musée du Louvre, Concorde, Champs-Élysées – Clemenceau, Charles de Gaulle – Étoile. Every station this day uses is on that line and not a single change is needed, which settles the shape by itself: museum in the morning, arch and avenue in the afternoon.
Skipping the hotel breakfast and buying at a boulangerie near the room is cheaper. A croissant and a coffee, then moving to fit the opening time, uses this day better.
Morning: the Louvre is EUR 32 for a Japanese visitor, so narrow it to three works
Louvre admission contains a catch that will throw a budget. The general rate shown is EUR 22, and that is the price for people resident in the European Economic Area. Visitors from outside it pay EUR 32. Coming from Japan that is the EUR 32 rate, online and at the window alike. For two that is EUR 64, the heaviest admission line in this route.
Highlights: the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Securing those three first and then walking whatever is left is the standard move on limited time. Trying to see all of it will not finish in a day. The Mona Lisa and the Victory are in the Denon wing and the Venus in the Sully wing, and those two wings alone fill two to three hours.
Practical note: booking is not required but is recommended. Under-18s enter free whatever their nationality. Entry after 18:00 on the first Friday of each month is also free, July and August excepted.
- Admission
- General, outside the EEA, EUR 32; EEA residents EUR 22
- Closed
- Tuesday
- Hours
- 9:00–18:00 (to 21:00 on Wednesdays and Fridays; last admission one hour before closing)
- Nearest
- Palais Royal – Musée du Louvre on line 1
Anyone whose day lands on a Wednesday or a Friday can go in the evening instead of the morning. It runs to 21:00, so take the arch in the afternoon and enter the museum as the light drops. The last two hours before closing visibly thin out. To photograph the glass pyramid head on, that is also the slot with no one in the frame.
Afternoon: the Arc de Triomphe is EUR 6 cheaper on Wednesdays
The roof of the Arc de Triomphe is EUR 22 from April to September, dropping to EUR 16 on Wednesdays. In winter, October to March, it is EUR 16 every day, so the discount exists only on a summer Wednesday. For two that is a EUR 12 difference, which is four metro journeys.
Highlights: from the roof of the 50-metre arch you look down on twelve avenues radiating outwards. This is the one place where the star pattern of the Paris street plan is legible in the real thing rather than on a map. The square is ringed by a circular roadway with no crossing at street level; the entrance is through a subway.
Practical note: from April to September it stays open to 23:00. To see the Eiffel Tower’s champagne flash from height, go up in that window and you get the whole tower flashing, straight ahead.
- Admission
- Apr–Sep EUR 22 (Wednesdays EUR 16); Oct–Mar EUR 16
- Hours
- Wed–Mon 10:00–23:00; Tue 11:00–23:00 (to 22:30 in winter; last admission 45 minutes before)
- Nearest
- Charles de Gaulle – Étoile on line 1
Highlights: roughly two kilometres downhill from the arch to the Place de la Concorde. Ninety minutes pass in the walking alone, and it delivers you at the next metro station. Walking it uphill is a different kind of tired over the same distance, which is why the arch comes first and the descent second.
Practical note: the south side of the avenue, the Seine side, falls into shade in the afternoon. On a summer afternoon the north side puts the sun in your face the whole way.
- Distance
- About 2 km from the arch to the Place de la Concorde
- Cost
- EUR 0
Dinner happens around the Place de la Concorde. A Paris bistro is thinly occupied at seven and starts filling after eight, so without a reservation the safer move is to go in at seven. Steak frites is on most menus and, for predictability of portion and price, the hardest thing to get wrong.
DAY 3Down from the hill, through the Impressionists, onto the river
Why this order: put the hills of Montmartre in the morning while there are legs for it, the flat museum in the afternoon and the river at sunset. The whole day descends.
The altitude falls through this day. The highest hill in the city in the morning, a museum on the left bank in the afternoon, the surface of the river in the evening. Build it the other way round and you are climbing cobbled slopes on tired legs.
Morning: the Sacré-Cœur is free inside, and only the dome is EUR 8
Highlights: a white basilica on the hill, with the city opening out southwards from the steps in front of it. The interior is free to enter. What is charged for is the climb to the dome, EUR 8: 280 spiral steps, no lift and no booking. You pay on the spot on the day.
Practical note: the dome opens at 10:30. The basilica itself opens at 6:30, so you can go inside while it is quiet and wait for the dome to open. Around midday the dome closes briefly for the staff break.
- Admission
- Basilica EUR 0; dome, 16 and over, EUR 8
- Hours
- Basilica 6:30–22:30 (open all year); dome 10:30–20:45 (last entry 20:15)
- Nearest
- Anvers on the metro, then a walk uphill
The cobbled streets around it hold the Place du Tertre, where the portrait artists gather, and a run of cafes. A funicular goes up the hill, but the climb itself is part of what the district is, so walking up and riding down is the sensible order. With any doubt about your legs, reverse it.
Afternoon: the Orsay is EUR 4 cheaper on Thursdays
Highlights: Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Degas. The main Impressionist painters are gathered into this one building. It was a railway station opened in 1900, and the standard photograph looks through the face of the great clock in the central hall towards the far bank of the Seine. It is smaller than the Louvre, so two and a half hours covers the main floors.
Practical note: Thursday alone runs to 21:45, and entering after 18:00 drops the admission from EUR 16 to EUR 12. A Tuesday departure puts day three exactly on a Thursday, which makes that slot available.
- Admission
- General EUR 16 (EUR 12 after 18:00 on Thursdays)
- Closed
- Monday
- Hours
- 9:30–18:00 (Thursday to 21:45, last admission 21:00)
- Nearest
- Musée d’Orsay on the RER C
People are tempted to put the Louvre and the Orsay on the same day, and this route separates them. The reason is simple: two large museums in one day and the second of them leaves almost nothing behind. Splitting them puts a different face of the city between morning and afternoon. What the split buys is not time but attention.
Evening: set the cruise against the time of sunset
Highlights: from the water the Eiffel Tower, the Orsay and the exterior of Notre-Dame on the Île de la Cité come one after another. The Orsay is on the river, so you walk out of the museum and on to the pier. An hour takes in the main embankments and gives you an hour sitting down looking at the city on the evening of a third day on foot.
Practical note: set the departure at 30 minutes before sunset and you leave in daylight and return in the dark. Sunset moves by more than three hours through the year, so look up the time for your date before choosing a sailing.
- Piers
- On the river by the Musée d’Orsay, or at the foot of the Eiffel Tower
- Duration
- About 60 minutes
Cruise fares vary by operator and season, which is why they are not in the cost table at the end. Planning to take one, set aside roughly JPY 2,000 to 3,000 a head outside the total. Dated tickets for things on the ground are on Klook’s Paris listings, where the slot can be chosen by date and hour.
DAY 4The palace-only ticket at Versailles disappeared in 2026
Why this order: a day that goes out of the city holds one thing. Palace in the morning, gardens and Trianon in the afternoon, back into town in the evening.
Versailles rebuilt its ticketing on 14 January 2026. The largest change is that the standalone ticket for the palace alone has gone from the price list. The official site states that the only ticket including a visit to the palace is the Passport. Older articles and guides saying the palace alone is cheap to enter no longer describe anything that exists.
Highlights: the Hall of Mirrors at the centre, 357 mirrors set in 17 arches, with the light from the garden windows reflected across the whole of it. The king’s apartments and the chapel sit on the same route, and the palace interior alone runs to around two hours. The first hour after opening is noticeably less dense than late morning.
Practical note: EUR 35 from April to October and EUR 25 from November to March. There is a late ticket at EUR 28 for entry after 16:00. Under-18s are free, and even a free ticket needs a booked time slot.
- Admission
- Passport Apr–Oct EUR 35; Nov–Mar EUR 25 (EEA residents EUR 3 less)
- Closed
- Monday, 25 December, 1 January, 1 May
- Hours
- Palace 9:00–18:30 (last admission 17:45); Trianon 12:00–18:30; gardens 7:00–20:30
- Getting there
- RER C, about 40 to 60 minutes, then 10 minutes on foot; the fare is the same EUR 2.55 as in the city
The gardens work differently too. From November to March they are free, and from April to October there is a EUR 15 charge on days with the fountain show or the musical gardens. That EUR 15 is inside the Passport, so seeing palace and gardens together in summer needs one ticket and nothing more. Go in winter and the same content costs EUR 10 less, because the gardens are free to walk.
The Trianon opens at 12:00. Palace first thing, into the gardens before noon, then round to the Trianon as it opens: the order falls out of the opening times on its own. The gardens run to several kilometres end to end, so whether you take the little train or hire a bicycle changes how the afternoon feels.
Nothing in the city goes into this day. Two hours of travel there and back plus five hours across the palace and the gardens puts a serious number of steps behind you by the time you are back in the evening. If anything goes into the night, make it dinner.
DAY 5-6The last half day is decided by the arithmetic to the airport
Why this order: build backwards from the departure time. Do not create hours spent moving with the luggage.
Non-stop flights to Japan mostly leave between midday and evening, and you need to be at Charles de Gaulle more than two hours ahead. The city to the airport is around 40 minutes on the RER B, with check-in and security on top. Whether the morning is usable depends on the flight: a 13:00 departure means leaving the city in the nine o’clock hour, which is no free time at all.
With a morning available, this is where the Eiffel Tower you did not climb on day one goes. Even to the summit, an early start gets you back down in an hour and a half. Leave the bags at the hotel or in a locker at one of the main Paris stations and move without them.
For shopping, the department stores around the Opéra or the Champs-Élysées are closest on the route. Purchases needing a tax refund take time to process at the airport as well, so making an expensive purchase on the day you fly is best avoided.
Alternatives
Rainy-day swap
This route holds up in rain. Days two and three lead with indoor museums, and what disappears is the walk down the Champs-Élysées and the hill at Montmartre. Both are free stretches, so nothing moves in the budget.
Day four is the weak one. The palace interior is fine, but the gardens and the Trianon are outdoors and large. Rain more or less erases the five hours of the afternoon. Rain on a summer fountain-show day means the EUR 15 inside the Passport goes unused. If the forecast arrives early enough to swap, push Versailles to a clear day and pull a museum day into the wet one.
The night view on day one also fails in rain. The Trocadéro is open high ground, which means standing under an umbrella for an hour. In that case move it to the evening of day five, or switch to going up the tower instead.
If the flight is delayed by an hour or more
A late outbound that lands you at night takes the whole of the day-one night view. Nothing on that day needs a booking, though, so what is lost is the experience and not the money. Build a museum or a cruise booking into day one and a timed ticket dies here instead. That is why the first day carries no reservations.
The frightening case is having bought timed entries in advance. The Louvre, the Orsay and Versailles all admit by slot, and past the slot you are generally not admitted. To build in the possibility of a delay, take an 11:00 or later slot on day two rather than early morning.
A delay on the way home only lengthens the wait at the airport and does not break the route. The dangerous version is a late start out of the city, because the RER B stops for engineering work and service problems. Counting on being at the airport two hours before departure is not enough on some days, so with a bag to check, work on leaving the city three hours ahead.
When you’re tired
The order of cuts is settled. First to go is the two-kilometre walk down the Champs-Élysées on the afternoon of day two; taking the metro back from the arch returns an hour and a half and the energy with it. Next is Montmartre on the morning of day three, where the climb is the hardest part on your legs. Both are free stretches, so cutting them changes nothing in the budget.
What must not be cut is day four. The travel to Versailles works like a fixed cost: deciding to go commits two hours. The only thing that shortens is the time on site, so seeing the palace and going back without walking the gardens clears the whole afternoon. The Passport price does not change for that, which makes going in winter the better-value version of the same visit.
Who this route does not suit is anyone who feels 20,000 steps the following day. Day three stacks a hill climb on top of standing in a museum, and day four walks several kilometres of garden. The hotel does not change, so there is no luggage to move, but the walking itself cannot be reduced. To hold the step count down, put a city-only day between days three and four and take five nights.
Where to stay
One condition applies to a room here: within five minutes on foot of a station on metro line 1 or on the RER C. Day two runs east to west on line 1, and days three and four use the RER C for the riverside and the suburbs. Anywhere that reaches one of those two adds no changes.
Paris hotels take their character from the arrondissement. The closer to the centre the more expensive, and the further out the cheaper, except that cheaper buys more metro journeys and loses time. This route costs itself out on nine metro journeys, and a room far from a station breaks that premise.
Around the Opéra, the 2nd and 9th, you are near where line 1 meets the RER A, with the department stores in walking distance. There are people on the streets late, so coming back from the cruise is comfortable. The drawback is price: the same room costs more here than in other arrondissements. The Marais, the 3rd and 4th, has several line 1 stations and narrow streets full of shops, but much of it is cobbled and a suitcase makes a considerable amount of noise and vibration on it.
The 7th puts the Eiffel Tower and the Orsay within walking distance, shortening days one and three. It is residential and quiet at night, with fewer dinner options than the centre. Montmartre, the 18th, has calmer room rates than the centre and starts the morning of day three from the neighbourhood. A hotel at the top of the hill, though, means going up and down the slope on the arrival and departure days with the bags.
Book in three stages: flights, room, admissions. The flight fixes the departure weekday, the weekday fixes which museums are reachable on which day, and the time slots go last. Reverse that order and you buy an entry ticket before noticing the closing day.
Splitting how you pay is worth doing. Pickpocketing and bag theft are common at the sights and on the metro, and losing the wallet takes the cash and the cards together. Carrying two cards on different networks, kept apart, is the practical answer. Connectivity works the same way, and whether a local SIM or roaming suits you is split by condition in the eSIM and pocket Wi-Fi comparison.
What this trip costs
Assumptions: two adults, the April to October high season, and dates where the Arc de Triomphe does not fall on a Wednesday. Flights, rooms and meals are out of the total because they move on the same dates. What is listed is only the published rates and fares that barely change. The metro count comes from the route itself: three journeys on day two, three on day three, two on day four and one on day five, nine in all.
Every figure above is the published rate as of 2026-09-14. The yen conversion uses the European Central Bank reference rate of 2026-09-11, JPY 178.56 to the euro. The Thursday closing time at the Musée d’Orsay is not confirmed against the museum’s own page.
That EUR 311.90 is the part that does not move as long as the route does not. What rides on top is flights, rooms and food, all three of which spread by your own conditions. Which lines to touch when tightening a budget is settled at this point.
The airfare moves most, close to doubling between a non-stop and a connection and between seasons. Rooms come next, with Paris varying a great deal by arrondissement and month. Food is predictable at around JPY 6,000 a head a day if breakfast comes from a boulangerie and only dinner is a bistro. Take lunch on a cafe terrace and the same food costs more, because of the cover.
Room to cut the admissions is in the season and the weekday. Going between November and March makes the Versailles Passport EUR 25 and the Arc de Triomphe EUR 16, EUR 28 less for two in total. In summer, landing the arch on a Wednesday alone saves EUR 12. Going the other way, the Eiffel Tower summit is EUR 73.40 for two and the Sacré-Cœur dome EUR 16, and this route treats both as optional.
The exchange rate matters as well. On the same EUR 311.90, a budget built at JPY 170 and one built at JPY 179 differ by about JPY 2,800. Admissions are fixed in euros, so a weaker yen raises only the yen total. For a comparison with another European city, the Rome four-night plan covers more of its ground on foot and carries a lighter transport share.
Durations and time on site are built from published opening hours and normal visit lengths.
Sources: the Louvre; the Musée d’Orsay; the Palace of Versailles; the Arc de Triomphe; the Sacré-Cœur; the Eiffel Tower; Île-de-France Mobilités / the European Commission (EES and ETIAS) / European Central Bank reference rates / Checked on 2026-09-14 / Photographs: Petr Kratochvil, HutheMeow, Jiuguang Wang, Wikimedia Commons, Gary Todd, Eric Pouhier (Wikimedia Commons, CC0 / CC BY-SA 2.0 / CC BY-SA 2.5 / CC BY-SA 3.0 / CC BY-SA 4.0)
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