Please sign in to post.

Paris Museum Pass details and review Nov 6-11 2024

While planning for our trip to Paris, I read a few negative comments on the Paris Museum Pass (PMP) and not many details on how it works and reservation requirements so I thought I'd post this here for others who are searching for answers.
We decided to purchase a 6 day pass for 110euro each. We were very satisfied with it and for our purposes it was well worth it, but your mileage may vary - We stayed 6 nights near St Suplice in the 6th, Paris was our only destination for this trip, we decided to concentrate on museums and monuments since we were there during a 'relatively lower tourist time' (still busy but not crazy).
From the PMP website, you can find the list of museums that require reservations. We checked several times in the 2 weeks before our trip and there were lots of time slots open for all places. It's not clearly explained but each site that requires reservations makes you set up an account, but making a reservation doesn't require you to already have a pass. If you wanted to, you could make more than one reservation with different accounts, there's no money involved in making the reservation (unless you order an audioguide at the same time). For sites that are part of the Centre des Montuments Nationaux, use the same account, but log in first, then go to the site to make the reservation (it's easier). You don't even have to buy the pass until you arrive.
The day before we left, we booked timed reservations at Ste Chappelle (Thur morning), Versailles (Fri), Louvre, (Sat morning). Each reservation came with a pdf and/or mobile pass that can be added to google wallet. We didn't print out any pdfs.
The morning that we were flying to Paris, we bought the PMP online, and printed out the pdf ticket (we also stored it digitally on our phones)

It is true that the PMP doesn't let you skip security lines but the longest we waited was 30 minutes at the Louvre (got in line at the Pyramid entrance at 9:30 for 10am entrance, was through securiy and past the museum entrance by 10:02). For most sites we waited less than 10 minutes to get through security and having the pass made it faster, especially if there was a timed reservation. We never had any problem showing and scanning our PMP. Some places scanned the reservation as well, others didn't.

Here's where we went using the pass:
Wed: Musee de Cluny, Pantheon
Thur Ste Chappelle (10am res), Conciergerie (we got in without reservation even though it was supposed to be required), Musee Picasso
Fri: Versailles, palace and Trianon (10am res for Palace, noon for trianon, but the timing for that doesn't matter, it opens at noon)
Sat: Louvre (10am res), cite Des Science Et De L'industrie (least favorite), Musee Rodin
Sun Musee D'Orsay, Arc Di Triomphe (spent much of afternoon at Pere La Chaise cemetary then the sun came out so we went to Arc Di Triomphe before sunset, with ticket security line was about 15 minutes)
Mon Musee Delecroix (very small, need 30 min max) Centre Pompidou, L'Orangerie (16:45 reservation, made Sat evening, we should have booked this earlier, there weren't many time slots available).

So, as you can see we went to many museums during the 6 days of the pass, and for us it was worth it.
Happy to answer any questions.

Posted by
621 posts

This is great information! I’m in the very beginning stages of planning about 8 days in Paris and still figuring out which museums I want to visit. This will definitely help me with deciding how many days I want for the pass and how the reservation process works. Merci!

Posted by
14679 posts

I'm so glad it worked well for your purposes. I think one of the biggest factors are the timed entries and that the Louvre restricts the number of Museum Pass entries for each time slot. So happy you were able to get in! Plus you saw some smaller museums you might not have accessed without the Pass.

I will also add just for informational purposes that although the passes are sold as 2, 4 or 6 day passes, they actually are 48 hours, 96 hours and 144 hours. SO...if you enter your first museum at Noon on Day 1, you have until 1159 on Day 3 to use it which covers the 48 hours. You can potentially use it parts of 3 days depending on how you stack your visits.

Posted by
255 posts

Yes, to be honest, I was a little surprised at how many time slots were available for the Louvre for all the days we were traveling, including the weekend, as of the beginning of the week we were leaving. But, it sounds like the middle to end of October was much busier (mid term break for school children). The only time slots we couldn't get for the Louvre were 9am and 9:30am. My brother and sister in law were in Paris at the beginning of October and did a skip the line tour of the Louvre and said the security line was very long. Maybe we had set our expectations such that we thought a 30 minute wait was pretty good.

Also, good point that the pass is really measured in hours. We could have used it on the morning of our seventh day, but we decided to visit 2 nearby churches instead since we had to head to the airport by 11am.

We made a spreadsheet with all of the museums covered by the pass, and the daily hours for the days we were there. We then each 'scored' the museums 1-4 based on interest, 4 being 'must go'. Then I kept checking weather forecasts as well as time slot availability leading up to our departure for France. We managed to get to all of our 4 and 3 rated museums and a few others. The spreadsheet might have been overkill but this trip was planned in 4 weeks so it was part of the fun of planning (usually I plan trips over several months).

Like I said, we decided this trip would be all about the museums and monuments, so we didn't mind the busy pace. Plus we enjoyed walking throughout the city and took time for nice dinners most nights, so it didn't feel like too much museum time.

Posted by
14679 posts

Oh, I agree 100% about a spreadsheet or similar list of daily closures with or without a museum pass! I have one in my googledocs file.

On one of the Mondays on my recent trip I had to pivot. I checked my list for what was open. I’d been to the Louvre already that trip (early Oct and a sold out day), several other open museums were sold but I quickly realized Basilica Saint-Denis was open and is never crowded. Bingo, lol.

Very handy quick reference to keep for your future trips!