What to do in Paris when it rains: the best indoor activities
Rain doesn't have to cancel your day in Paris: the city has plenty of covered arcades, human-scale museums and architecturally spectacular spaces to fill a whole day without ever needing an umbrella. The right plan mostly depends on how much time you have and who's with you: a two-hour gap between showers calls for something different than a full day with kids. Here's how to combine the best indoor spots, from quickest to most complete.
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The covered passages
The 2nd arrondissement holds Paris's finest covered passages, glass-roofed 19th-century shopping arcades. Galerie Vivienne, opened in 1826 in a neoclassical "Pompeian" style, features a domed glass rotunda and a mosaic floor by Facchina. Right nearby, Passage des Panoramas, dating from 1799, is the oldest surviving covered passage in Paris. Of the roughly thirty passages that once existed in the 19th century, only about a dozen survive today, most of them clustered in this neighborhood.
The Musée de l'Orangerie
Tucked inside the Jardin des Tuileries, this human-scale museum houses the eight large Water Lilies compositions by Claude Monet, spread across two oval rooms designed with the artist and opened in 1927. Monet had planned natural overhead lighting so the canvases would shift tone with the daylight outside, a feature restored in 2006. Allow one to two hours for the visit, plus the Walter-Guillaume collection downstairs (Cézanne, Renoir, Modigliani, Picasso).
The Galeries Lafayette dome
Even with no shopping in mind, the flagship store on Boulevard Haussmann is worth a stop for its 1912 Art Nouveau dome, a forty-three-meter glass-and-steel structure adorned with stained glass by Jacques Grüber and ironwork by Louis Majorelle. Restored in 2021 after more than two years of work, it can be admired for free from the store's various floors, well out of the rain.
A half-day for families, at the Cité des sciences
Inside the Parc de la Villette (19th arrondissement), the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie and its Cité des enfants offer several hours of fully indoor activities designed by age group for 2-10 year-olds. It's the most reliable option for a rainy day with young children, our guide to Paris with kids covers how to plan it.
A free, sheltered option, the municipal museums
The Musée Carnavalet, the Petit Palais and the Victor Hugo House are free to visit year-round with no booking required, for a full afternoon indoors without spending a cent: our roundup of Paris's free museums covers the full list.
Tips
- Only two hours between showers? Stay close: Galerie Vivienne and the Passage des Panoramas are less than an hour's walk from each other, in the 2nd arrondissement.
- For half a day, add the Musée de l'Orangerie or the Louvre, both a quarter of an hour's walk from the covered passages along the Tuileries garden.
- For a full day, pick a single big museum: rain always slows the walk between two stops.
- The covered passages of the 2nd link up on foot under glass roofs, with barely a step on the wet pavement; for everything else, the metro and RER cover the city with over 300 stations.
- The Atelier des Lumières, in a former foundry in the 11th arrondissement, offers another sheltered outing with its immersive digital exhibitions.
- In Les Halles, the Bourse de Commerce contemporary art museum and the Saint-Eustache church (great organ, Keith Haring triptych, free entry) are reached directly from the underground station; our dedicated guide details the route.
- For a screening under cover, the Cinémathèque française (rue de Bercy, 12th) combines screening rooms and exhibitions in a building by Frank Gehry.
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