Paris Museum Pass - A Great Deal
Mar 16 '02
The Bottom Line The Carte Musee is a great deal for anyone who is planning to visit Paris. It will save you money even if you only go to a few sites.
If you're planning to visit even only a few of the great museums and monuments in Paris, I would highly recommend that you get a Museum Pass (also called the Carte Musees et Monuments). You can get a 1-day, 3-day, or 5-day pass and it gets you into almost everything (70 sites) in Paris (one notable exception is the Eiffel Tower). If you're getting a multiple day pass, be aware that it is good for consecutive days and plan accordingly.
The best thing about this pass is that you can go into any museum as many times as you want during the length of the pass, so you don't feel like you need to see the entire Louvre at one time because you just spent $12 to get in. Spend a few hours there on two or three occasions instead.
There are also many museums and monuments you might not otherwise want to spend the money to see or know if it is worth spending the money to see. With the pass, you can go in, check it out, and if you're not interested, you haven't lost a thing.
The people who promote the pass promote that it will prevent you from having to wait in line to buy tickets, which is true, but I found I still had to wait in line to go through the security checks, so I still think the main advantage is the savings on admissions. I was there in Sept. and the ticket lines didn't seem to be that long, but if you are going in the summer, this very well may be an important feature to you as well.
The 1-day pass costs about $15, the 3-day about $30, and the 5-day about $50. Individual entries to the sites are usually $5-$10, so if you go to 2-3 sites a day, it is worth it. Note too that children under 18 are free and adults under 25 are half price in many places, so factor this in when you're deciding who to buy the passes for.
The passes are available in the visitor's bureaus and you may be able to obtain them stateside through your travel agent as well.
Following is a partial list of the sites the Carte will get you into:
Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon's Tomb, Pompidou Center (modern art), Balzac Museum, Sewers of Paris, the Louvre, Towers and Crypt of Notre-Dame, l'Orangerie, the Orsay, the Panthéon, Picasso Museum, Rodin Museum, Rodin Museum at Meudon, Sainte-Chapelle, Basilica of Saint-Denis, Versailles, Victor Hugo Museum.
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