Teenagers tune out anything that looks like a kids' outing. These are the places that hold their attention: tunnels lined with bones, art projected across entire rooms, bouldering walls, escape rooms and coasters that go upside down. Most still work for a younger sibling, so the whole family can go together. Here's what we checked, from the Catacombs to the Saint-Ouen flea market.
The Catacombs are a 1.5 km one-way walk through old limestone quarry tunnels 20 meters under the city. The bones of several million Parisians, moved from old cemeteries, line the walls in stacked patterns of skulls and bones. Carved plaques mark the streets overhead.
It suits curious older kids who like history. Younger or anxious children may find the dim, narrow passages and the bones too much.
A former 1835 steel foundry where 140 projectors cover the walls of a 1,500 m² hall with moving artworks set to music. Visitors walk through the images, then see them multiplied in a mirror tower.
In the Atelier des Enfants, kids color a dinosaur or Renaissance template, scan it, and watch their drawing come to life on the wall. The main show changes through the year.
Seven Squares is a 5,000m² indoor leisure center inside the Boom Boom Villette mall, next to the Cité des Sciences. Its pirate-themed soft play, L'Île de Tortuga, has a separate toddler area with ball pits and foam blocks, and a big-kid maze of slides, tunnels, a pirate ship and a kart track.
Older kids can move on to the trampoline park, bowling, laser game, VR and the arcade.
A bouldering gym at the foot of Montmartre, a few steps from Montmartre Cemetery, with more than 12 problems at each grade and routes reset all the time. Kids from 3 to 12 get their own area of colorful walls, while teens climb the adult sectors.
Classes, school-holiday camps and climbing birthday parties run year-round, and the Cantine restaurant on site serves seasonal dishes with vegetarian options.
Le Centquatre is an arts center built around huge covered halls that anyone can walk through. Dancers, jugglers, roller skaters and acrobats rehearse in the open spaces, so kids can watch krump, breakdance or diabolo up close.
Inside, the Maison des Petits is a play and reading room designed by artist matali crasset, with painting and water play for toddlers and a parent. Exhibitions and shows run alongside.
La Gaîté Lyrique is a City of Paris cultural center in a listed 19th-century theater. The ground floor and first floor are open to wander, with a café-bar, artist exhibitions and a workshop space.
Kids' programs include Contes à paillettes storytelling one Sunday a month and the Les Grands Yeux children's festival. Teens get the Centre Pompidou's Studio 13/16, a 400 m² creative lab on level 1.
The Paris Sewer Museum sits inside working sewer tunnels under the Pont de l'Alma. An elevator takes visitors down to a 500-meter walk through real galleries, past the machinery sewer workers use to clear the tunnels, scale models, and displays on how the city cleans its water.
Kids who like machines, pipes and how things work get the most out of it. Expect some smells and damp air.
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.
The Puces de Saint-Ouen is the world's largest cluster of antique and secondhand dealers, spread over seven hectares just past the northern edge of Paris. Eleven covered markets, among them Vernaison, Paul Bert Serpette and Dauphine, sit alongside five shopping streets and sidewalk stalls. Kids who like a treasure hunt can wander narrow alleys packed with old furniture, paintings, crystal and vintage clothes.
Frank Gehry's building looks like a ship under twelve glass sails, set at the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. Inside, 11 galleries hold modern and contemporary art shows that change through the year.
For kids, the outside is half the visit: stairs climb to roof terraces with views over the trees, and a water basin runs along the base, beside Olafur Eliasson's glowing column corridor, Inside the Horizon.
The Eiffel Tower is the 330-meter iron tower on the Champ de Mars, with three levels open to visitors. The first level has a glass floor where kids can stand and look straight down to the ground.
Stairs climb about 600 steps to the second level, and elevators go all the way up. The top, at 276 meters, holds a champagne bar and Gustave Eiffel's old private apartment.
Prizoners runs two wizard-themed escape rooms built for kids' birthday parties. Kids arrive as apprentice alchemists: they get a wizard name, put on a cape and drink a potion, then solve puzzles as a team with a game host to recover stolen elixirs, finishing by mixing their own potion.
Afterward the group has a private room for cake and presents, and each kid goes home with a wizard diploma.
Place du Tertre is the old village square at the top of Montmartre, a few streets from the Sacré-Cœur basilica. Painters set up easels here every day, and portrait artists sketch visitors, kids included, while families watch.
Picasso, Modigliani and Utrillo lived nearby in the early 1900s. The Montmartre funicular climbs from the foot of the hill to Sacré-Cœur, skipping the Rue Foyatier stairs.
A theme park built on the Astérix comics, split into five themed worlds: Gaul, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, Egypt and the Vikings. Its 51 attractions run from a mini train, flying chairs and play areas for young kids to big coasters like Osiris Convolvulis.
There are nine water rides and live shows. In fall the park adds haunted houses, and in winter a Gaulish Christmas with an ice rink.
Teenagers tune out anything that looks like a kids' outing. These are the places that hold their attention: tunnels lined with bones, art projected across entire rooms, bouldering walls, escape rooms and coasters that go upside down. Most still work for a younger sibling, so the whole family can go together. Here's what we checked, from the Catacombs to the Saint-Ouen flea market.
The Catacombs are a 1.5 km one-way walk through old limestone quarry tunnels 20 meters under the city. The bones of several million Parisians, moved from old cemeteries, line the walls in stacked patterns of skulls and bones. Carved plaques mark the streets overhead.
It suits curious older kids who like history. Younger or anxious children may find the dim, narrow passages and the bones too much.
A former 1835 steel foundry where 140 projectors cover the walls of a 1,500 m² hall with moving artworks set to music. Visitors walk through the images, then see them multiplied in a mirror tower.
In the Atelier des Enfants, kids color a dinosaur or Renaissance template, scan it, and watch their drawing come to life on the wall. The main show changes through the year.
Seven Squares is a 5,000m² indoor leisure center inside the Boom Boom Villette mall, next to the Cité des Sciences. Its pirate-themed soft play, L'Île de Tortuga, has a separate toddler area with ball pits and foam blocks, and a big-kid maze of slides, tunnels, a pirate ship and a kart track.
Older kids can move on to the trampoline park, bowling, laser game, VR and the arcade.
A bouldering gym at the foot of Montmartre, a few steps from Montmartre Cemetery, with more than 12 problems at each grade and routes reset all the time. Kids from 3 to 12 get their own area of colorful walls, while teens climb the adult sectors.
Classes, school-holiday camps and climbing birthday parties run year-round, and the Cantine restaurant on site serves seasonal dishes with vegetarian options.
Le Centquatre is an arts center built around huge covered halls that anyone can walk through. Dancers, jugglers, roller skaters and acrobats rehearse in the open spaces, so kids can watch krump, breakdance or diabolo up close.
Inside, the Maison des Petits is a play and reading room designed by artist matali crasset, with painting and water play for toddlers and a parent. Exhibitions and shows run alongside.
La Gaîté Lyrique is a City of Paris cultural center in a listed 19th-century theater. The ground floor and first floor are open to wander, with a café-bar, artist exhibitions and a workshop space.
Kids' programs include Contes à paillettes storytelling one Sunday a month and the Les Grands Yeux children's festival. Teens get the Centre Pompidou's Studio 13/16, a 400 m² creative lab on level 1.
The Paris Sewer Museum sits inside working sewer tunnels under the Pont de l'Alma. An elevator takes visitors down to a 500-meter walk through real galleries, past the machinery sewer workers use to clear the tunnels, scale models, and displays on how the city cleans its water.
Kids who like machines, pipes and how things work get the most out of it. Expect some smells and damp air.
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.
The Puces de Saint-Ouen is the world's largest cluster of antique and secondhand dealers, spread over seven hectares just past the northern edge of Paris. Eleven covered markets, among them Vernaison, Paul Bert Serpette and Dauphine, sit alongside five shopping streets and sidewalk stalls. Kids who like a treasure hunt can wander narrow alleys packed with old furniture, paintings, crystal and vintage clothes.
Frank Gehry's building looks like a ship under twelve glass sails, set at the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. Inside, 11 galleries hold modern and contemporary art shows that change through the year.
For kids, the outside is half the visit: stairs climb to roof terraces with views over the trees, and a water basin runs along the base, beside Olafur Eliasson's glowing column corridor, Inside the Horizon.
The Eiffel Tower is the 330-meter iron tower on the Champ de Mars, with three levels open to visitors. The first level has a glass floor where kids can stand and look straight down to the ground.
Stairs climb about 600 steps to the second level, and elevators go all the way up. The top, at 276 meters, holds a champagne bar and Gustave Eiffel's old private apartment.
Prizoners runs two wizard-themed escape rooms built for kids' birthday parties. Kids arrive as apprentice alchemists: they get a wizard name, put on a cape and drink a potion, then solve puzzles as a team with a game host to recover stolen elixirs, finishing by mixing their own potion.
Afterward the group has a private room for cake and presents, and each kid goes home with a wizard diploma.
Place du Tertre is the old village square at the top of Montmartre, a few streets from the Sacré-Cœur basilica. Painters set up easels here every day, and portrait artists sketch visitors, kids included, while families watch.
Picasso, Modigliani and Utrillo lived nearby in the early 1900s. The Montmartre funicular climbs from the foot of the hill to Sacré-Cœur, skipping the Rue Foyatier stairs.
A theme park built on the Astérix comics, split into five themed worlds: Gaul, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, Egypt and the Vikings. Its 51 attractions run from a mini train, flying chairs and play areas for young kids to big coasters like Osiris Convolvulis.
There are nine water rides and live shows. In fall the park adds haunted houses, and in winter a Gaulish Christmas with an ice rink.
