Spring and Easter with Kids in Paris 2027

Each Easter, the team at Vaux-le-Vicomte hides thousands of chocolates across the 17th-century château's gardens and woods. Separate hunts run at the same time for different age groups, so the youngest search a calm patch of the vegetable garden while older kids range through the woods. Every participant goes home with chocolate. Between hunts there are carriage rides and craft activities. It suits families happy to walk a big estate.

Paris's centuries-old funfair sets up each spring on the Pelouse de Reuilly, at the edge of the Bois de Vincennes. Around 250 rides and stalls fill the lawn, from gentle rides for small kids to big thrill rides for teens, plus prize games, candy floss and churros.

Afternoons suit younger kids best. Evenings turn loud, crowded and lit up, which is what most teens are after.

On fountain-show days, the fountains and groves of the Versailles gardens spout in time to baroque music. Several walking circuits lead past the famous basins and into groves usually closed to visitors. Kids get big moments at the Latona and Apollo fountains, where the water runs high over the gilded statues. It suits families happy to spend hours on foot outdoors.

Parc de Sceaux is a formal French garden laid out by André Le Nôtre in the 17th century, spread over 181 hectares just south of Paris. Kids can follow the stepped cascades down to the Octagon basin, walk the 1,140-meter Grand Canal and hunt for the statues along the allées.

In spring, the grove of Japanese cherry trees draws families for hanami picnics. The château houses the estate's museum.

A château full of old-master paintings, three gardens and the Great Stables, built in the 1700s as a palace for horses, share one estate. Inside the stables, the Living Museum of the Horse fills 15 rooms, and a resident riding troupe performs under the great dome.

Kids can watch a narrated 30-minute riding demonstration, then run the paths of Le Nôtre's formal garden, the Anglo-Chinese garden and the English garden.

The Natural History Museum's zoo sits on the edge of the Bois de Vincennes, under its landmark Grand Rocher. Over 3,000 animals live in five biozones: Africa, Patagonia, Europe, Amazon-Guyana and Madagascar.

Kids watch giraffes and white rhinos on the African plain, penguins and sea lions in Patagonia, and lemurs up close in Madagascar. A tropical greenhouse with manatees makes a warm stop on a cold day.

A 5-hectare organic working farm run by the City of Paris inside the Bois de Vincennes. Kids meet sheep in the barn, Gascon pigs, goats and rabbits, then walk the meadows, an orchard of fruit trees and a vegetable garden full of herbs. It suits toddlers who want to see animals up close as much as older kids curious about where food comes from.

Parc Floral is a 30-hectare botanical park in the Bois de Vincennes, laid out as themed gardens, an oak grove and pavilions of bonsai, ferns and Jurassic plants.

For kids there is a playground with sandboxes and swings, a Guignol puppet theater, minigolf, a treetop ropes course, an escape game and four-wheel pedal bikes to rent. On warm days the open-air stage hosts Pestacles, a children's music festival.

Thoiry has two parts. First, an 8 km safari loop that families drive in their own car, windows closed, past zebras, giraffes, rhinos, elephants and bears.

Then a 90-hectare walking zoo with more than 750 animals, a lemur island and a gorilla area, plus play areas: the Safari Air Park, a giant maze and the Île Mystérieuse. No car? Bush trucks run the safari loop, lions included.

Paris's first botanical garden, open to the public for almost 400 years, runs from Gare d'Austerlitz to the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution between long alleys of trimmed plane trees.

Kids can climb the labyrinth hill to Buffon's gazebo, one of the oldest metal structures in the world, and find a cedar planted in 1734. The Ménagerie zoo, the Grandes Serres greenhouses and the natural history galleries sit inside the grounds.

A working farm, farmed by the Laureau family since 1746, beside the Versailles château park. A loop path passes pens of dwarf goats, sheep, cows, donkeys, Shetland ponies, pigs and hens, then winds through a small wood dotted with barrel huts.

Kids can stroke the goats, watch the animals being fed, and join short workshops making bread, butter, apple juice or recycled paper.