Paris, the city of art and culture, offers a wide variety of options to enjoy its iconic museums without spending anything. Free museums in Paris are an excellent opportunity for history lovers. Also, if you are passing through and need to explore the city without the weight of your suitcases, LOCK & enjoy! provides the perfect solution with its convenient Lockers in Parisallowing you to explore every cultural corner of the city in total comfort.
Discover the best free museums in Paris
We have prepared a selection of the best free museums in Paris for you to choose from. Any of them offers an enriching cultural experience and at no cost.
Museum of Fine Arts
This museum is located in the Petit Palaisone of the most emblematic buildings in Paris. Therefore, it is a great opportunity for you to visit both places.
It has 2 floors, the first dedicated to sculptures and the second is a romantic palace of the nineteenth century. In the latter there is a collection of paintings also from the same century.
Once you finish your visit, we recommend you to stroll through the garden of Petit Palais and have a coffee or lunch. We would like to point out that it is a small oasis, since there are no crowds.
It is very close to the Champs Elysées and is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
Carnavalet Museum
It focuses on the history of Paris, from its origins to the present day. It is also one of the oldest because it was inaugurated in 1880. It is located in the buildings of two former hotels that are connected by a gallery.
In this museum there are Gallo-Roman and medieval archaeological remains, vestiges of the French Revolution, all kinds of sculptures, furniture and works of art. All these collections are in rooms that recreate the Parisian private residences from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. At LOCK & enjoy! we also advise you to visit the Orangery, although if there is a temporary exhibition there may be a cost.
To visit this free museum, head to the Maraisone of the most picturesque and captivating neighborhoods in Paris. Please note that it is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
Shoa Memorial
Very close to the Seine River is the Holocaust Museum or Shoah Memorial. If you like history, we recommend it, although its subject matter is shocking.
It is a historical journey about the odyssey that the Jewish people lived through with the persecutions against them at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries. There are first-person testimonies of French Jews who were sent to different concentration camps throughout Europe. There is also a lot of material such as newspaper clippings, videos, and even objects belonging to the victims.
It is open from Sunday to Friday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
Balzac House
Honoré de Balzac was one of the great French writers of the 19th century, both in his country and in the rest of Europe.
Just a 10-minute drive from the Eiffel Tower, Balzac’s house is located on a slope with a small garden. Here he wrote most of his works and corrected part of his most famous play, The Human Comedy.
We would like to highlight the room that served as the writer’s office, since it is preserved as it was, furniture included. In addition, there are also numerous personal objects, portraits and printed pages of the work mentioned above.
This house-museum opens its doors only from Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
The National Archives
This museum preserves the public archives of the Middle Ages and the Ancien Régime, as well as countless archives of the city’s notaries.
There are a total of 373 kilometers in a straight line of archives that aim to document the history of France from the 7th century to the present day. For example, in this museum you will find the decree that abolished slavery and that was signed in 1848. There are exhibition rooms located in interior rooms that will surprise you with their design.
The custody of these archives has been distributed among different buildings in Paris, however, those that can be visited are in the Marais, more specifically in the Soubise and Rohan hotels.
Open daily from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm.
Museum of Man
If you wonder who we are, where we come from and where we are going, you must visit this museum.
It is a priceless collection with, for example, fossils of prehistoric men, anatomical waxes, small Palaeolithic statues, etc. It is easy to follow in didactic terms, since it is classified into languages, ethnicities, rituals and beliefs.
The objective is to understand the human being and his place in the living world, as well as the history of his origins. It consists of two large curved naves and an atrium.
We would like to point out that this museum is very close to our luggage locker at the Eiffel Tower. Lockers at the Eiffel Tower..
Cernuschi Museum
It is dedicated to Asian arts, more specifically from China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. It was created thanks to the legacy left by Henri Cernuschi in 1896. It is important to mention that it ranks sixth among the city’s municipal museums because it receives 60,000 visitors a year.
It has more than 15,000 works of art, which makes it one of the 5 most important Asian art museums in Europe. We are sure you will be amazed from beginning to end, especially by the Meguro Buddha.
Open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
Discover the free museums in Paris with LOCK & enjoy! Make your reservation at one of our luggage Lockers and enjoy and enjoy all the activities in Paris.
