Paris has some of the world's great museums, and a surprising number of them work for kids, not just the grown-ups. These are the ones with something to climb into, pedal, press or stare up at: submarines, Concordes, a parade of savannah animals, a century-old merry-go-round. Here's what we checked, from the Cité des Sciences to the Musée des Arts Forains.
A science museum in a huge glass-and-steel hall on the edge of Parc de la Villette. Kids push, pull and test their way through hands-on permanent and temporary exhibitions, sit under the planetarium dome, and walk through the Argonaute, a real navy submarine.
The Cité des enfants has two timed play areas, one for preschoolers and one for school-age kids, built around water play, a forest and a building site.
The Grande Galerie de l'Évolution is the Natural History Museum's main hall at the Jardin des Plantes, an 1889 iron-and-glass nave holding about 7,000 specimens. Downstairs, whales and a giant squid loom over sea life. Upstairs, an elephant leads a parade of savannah animals, and the lights and soundtrack run from dawn to a passing storm. A room of threatened and extinct species holds a giant panda and a Tasmanian tiger.
The Musée des Arts et Métiers holds more than 2,400 inventions across seven collections, from scientific instruments to transport. The standout room is the former church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, where early planes hang over vintage cars and Foucault's pendulum swings in the nave.
Kids can also find Bartholdi's original model of the Statue of Liberty and Pascal's mechanical calculator, and museum staff run demonstrations in the galleries.
A private museum of fairground rides, automatons and show objects from the 19th and early 20th centuries, set in Bercy's old wine pavilions. Guides who double as performers lead every visit, start up the musical automatons and invite visitors onto century-old carousels, including a merry-go-round turned by pedaling bicycles.
The halls include a Belle Epoque funfair and a little Venice with its own lagoon.
The Louvre is a former royal palace with about 35,000 works on display, from Egyptian antiquities to the Mona Lisa. It is huge and tiring for kids, so families do best picking one wing and keeping the visit short.
The Studio, on the ground floor of the Richelieu wing, has drawing activities, board games, a reading nook and a baby space with a bottle warmer and nursing chair.
The Musée d'Orsay fills a former railway station, built 1898 to 1900 on the Left Bank of the Seine. Under the glass roof of the old train hall, a long central nave is lined with sculptures, and a gilded station clock hangs at one end.
The galleries hold Impressionist paintings kids may know from books: Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhône and Monet's Blue Water Lilies.
Around 3,500 objects from Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Americas line one long circuit, set on either side of a central aisle shaped like a river. Themed nooks off the path focus on one region or kind of work, and displays rotate often. Outside, a garden by the Seine opens earlier and closes later than the museum. Suits kids who like hunting for faces in carved masks.
France's national aviation museum fills 12 halls and an outdoor tarmac at Le Bourget airport with more than 100 aircraft, from the first flying machines and a Spitfire to two Concordes.
Kids can walk inside a Boeing 747, play pilot or astronaut at Planète Pilote's 40 hands-on stations, catch a planetarium show, and climb the restored 1953 control tower for a view over the runways.
The Musée de l'Armée fills the Hôtel des Invalides with French military history, from medieval suits of armor and samurai gear to the Napoleonic era and both world wars. Cannons line the main courtyard, and Napoleon's tomb sits under the golden Dôme. The Plans-Reliefs museum shows giant scale models of fortified towns.
Kids who like knights and battles get the most from it; the world war galleries suit older children.
Musée en Herbe is a small art museum made for kids and the adults with them, with a playful, hands-on take on art. The current show, marking 30 years of Pokémon, sends kids on a treasure hunt past rare cards, giant Game Boys and works by Takashi Murakami and Daniel Arsham.
Art workshops for toddlers and older kids run alongside the visit.
Musée Carnavalet is the city's history museum, running from prehistoric oak dugout canoes to the 20th century. For kids, the standouts are two rooms of old shop signs, the Gallo-Roman finds, and the Revolution rooms with a heater shaped like the Bastille and Marie Antoinette's slipper.
Later rooms hold Mucha's Art Nouveau jewelry shop and Proust's bedroom, and the gardens are open for a snack break.
The navy and seafaring museum in the Palais de Chaillot shows more than 1,000 objects across themed galleries. Kids walk into a life-size ship's prow under a dome film of the sea, step inside a giant wave in the shipwrecks room, and study ship models nearly 5 meters long, gilded figureheads, compasses and lighthouse lenses.
A family trail marked with flags runs through the route.
Paris has some of the world's great museums, and a surprising number of them work for kids, not just the grown-ups. These are the ones with something to climb into, pedal, press or stare up at: submarines, Concordes, a parade of savannah animals, a century-old merry-go-round. Here's what we checked, from the Cité des Sciences to the Musée des Arts Forains.
A science museum in a huge glass-and-steel hall on the edge of Parc de la Villette. Kids push, pull and test their way through hands-on permanent and temporary exhibitions, sit under the planetarium dome, and walk through the Argonaute, a real navy submarine.
The Cité des enfants has two timed play areas, one for preschoolers and one for school-age kids, built around water play, a forest and a building site.
The Grande Galerie de l'Évolution is the Natural History Museum's main hall at the Jardin des Plantes, an 1889 iron-and-glass nave holding about 7,000 specimens. Downstairs, whales and a giant squid loom over sea life. Upstairs, an elephant leads a parade of savannah animals, and the lights and soundtrack run from dawn to a passing storm. A room of threatened and extinct species holds a giant panda and a Tasmanian tiger.
The Musée des Arts et Métiers holds more than 2,400 inventions across seven collections, from scientific instruments to transport. The standout room is the former church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, where early planes hang over vintage cars and Foucault's pendulum swings in the nave.
Kids can also find Bartholdi's original model of the Statue of Liberty and Pascal's mechanical calculator, and museum staff run demonstrations in the galleries.
A private museum of fairground rides, automatons and show objects from the 19th and early 20th centuries, set in Bercy's old wine pavilions. Guides who double as performers lead every visit, start up the musical automatons and invite visitors onto century-old carousels, including a merry-go-round turned by pedaling bicycles.
The halls include a Belle Epoque funfair and a little Venice with its own lagoon.
The Louvre is a former royal palace with about 35,000 works on display, from Egyptian antiquities to the Mona Lisa. It is huge and tiring for kids, so families do best picking one wing and keeping the visit short.
The Studio, on the ground floor of the Richelieu wing, has drawing activities, board games, a reading nook and a baby space with a bottle warmer and nursing chair.
The Musée d'Orsay fills a former railway station, built 1898 to 1900 on the Left Bank of the Seine. Under the glass roof of the old train hall, a long central nave is lined with sculptures, and a gilded station clock hangs at one end.
The galleries hold Impressionist paintings kids may know from books: Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhône and Monet's Blue Water Lilies.
Around 3,500 objects from Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Americas line one long circuit, set on either side of a central aisle shaped like a river. Themed nooks off the path focus on one region or kind of work, and displays rotate often. Outside, a garden by the Seine opens earlier and closes later than the museum. Suits kids who like hunting for faces in carved masks.
France's national aviation museum fills 12 halls and an outdoor tarmac at Le Bourget airport with more than 100 aircraft, from the first flying machines and a Spitfire to two Concordes.
Kids can walk inside a Boeing 747, play pilot or astronaut at Planète Pilote's 40 hands-on stations, catch a planetarium show, and climb the restored 1953 control tower for a view over the runways.
The Musée de l'Armée fills the Hôtel des Invalides with French military history, from medieval suits of armor and samurai gear to the Napoleonic era and both world wars. Cannons line the main courtyard, and Napoleon's tomb sits under the golden Dôme. The Plans-Reliefs museum shows giant scale models of fortified towns.
Kids who like knights and battles get the most from it; the world war galleries suit older children.
Musée en Herbe is a small art museum made for kids and the adults with them, with a playful, hands-on take on art. The current show, marking 30 years of Pokémon, sends kids on a treasure hunt past rare cards, giant Game Boys and works by Takashi Murakami and Daniel Arsham.
Art workshops for toddlers and older kids run alongside the visit.
Musée Carnavalet is the city's history museum, running from prehistoric oak dugout canoes to the 20th century. For kids, the standouts are two rooms of old shop signs, the Gallo-Roman finds, and the Revolution rooms with a heater shaped like the Bastille and Marie Antoinette's slipper.
Later rooms hold Mucha's Art Nouveau jewelry shop and Proust's bedroom, and the gardens are open for a snack break.
The navy and seafaring museum in the Palais de Chaillot shows more than 1,000 objects across themed galleries. Kids walk into a life-size ship's prow under a dome film of the sea, step inside a giant wave in the shipwrecks room, and study ship models nearly 5 meters long, gilded figureheads, compasses and lighthouse lenses.
A family trail marked with flags runs through the route.
