The 5th is the Latin Quarter, and it fits a lot of kid-friendly ground into a few walkable streets. Think gardens with animals and old carousels, natural history galleries full of skeletons, riverside lawns, and rainy-day backups like kids' films and bowling. This list gathers the spots we've checked in the arrondissement, so you can plan a morning or a whole day without crossing the city.
The Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle turns 400 and is marking it with a dedicated program of events at its home in the Jardin des Plantes. The garden's long central perspective is planted with flowers in the anniversary's colors, and an exhibition traces four centuries of dialogue between the artists and naturalists of the Muséum.
It suits families who like a garden walk with some history along the way.
A walk-through Christmas show at the Grand Hôtel des Rêves in the Latin Quarter. Families follow young Yule from room to room, through a world of nisses, witches and magic wardrobes, tracing the very first Christmas present from an old toy shop to a post office at the far edge of the North Pole.
It suits kids who like fairy tales and can follow a story told in French.
Mon P'tit Loup Magique is a magic and storytelling show by magician Richard Atlas. Arthur goes looking for the so-called big bad wolf and finds him somewhere no one expects. Along the way come bits of famous wolf tales, old sayings, music, poetry and plenty of jokes.
It suits kids who like a story with a little fright in it that turns warm and funny.
L'Heure Joyeuse opened in 1924 as the first children's library in Paris. Its two floors hold a children's space and a teen and adult space, with about 25,000 books, CDs, DVDs and board games on open shelves.
Kids can borrow kamishibai paper-theater sets, play board games, use computers set aside for young readers, and join storytimes, workshops, film screenings and shows.
A small carousel inside the Jardin des Plantes where every mount is an extinct or endangered animal: a dodo, a thylacine, the giant elephant bird, a Barbary lion, a horned turtle and an early giraffe called a sivatherium, with a panda and a gorilla in the mix. A scientist at the natural history museum next door had it built in 1992 to get people talking about extinction.
Bowling Mouffetard has eight bowling lanes plus billiard tables, on Rue Mouffetard, the old market street of the Latin Quarter. Shoes and balls come with each game, and socks are required (disposable ones are handed out).
Weekend mornings and weekday afternoons draw families. Evenings, especially Friday to Sunday, turn into a grown-up night out with no bookings taken.
Studio des Ursulines is a single-screen cinema near the Luxembourg Gardens, open since 1926 and the first art-house cinema in France. Since 2003 it has programmed mainly for young audiences: animated features, short-film programs, ciné-concerts with live music, previews and festivals such as Mon Premier Festival for the youngest. Kids' films carry a starting age, many from 3 or 4, and some screenings come with workshops or meet-the-filmmaker talks.
The Panthéon is a domed 18th-century monument on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, designed by the architect Soufflot. Under the dome, Foucault's pendulum swings on a 67-meter wire, its path slowly shifting as the Earth turns.
Below the nave, the crypt holds the tombs of Victor Hugo, Marie Curie and other figures France chose to honor. Best for school-age kids curious about science or history.
A long, narrow garden on the Left Bank of the Seine, running along Quai Saint-Bernard between Pont de Sully and Place Valhubert. Kids get a playground, a skate park, ping-pong tables, a soccer pitch and street workout bars, with sculptures set along the riverside paths.
Opened in 1794, the Ménagerie is one of the oldest zoos in the world, set inside the Jardin des Plantes. It keeps about 500 animals from 122 species, mostly small and medium-sized: red pandas, snow leopards, orangutans, Seychelles tortoises, Malayan tapirs and keas.
The listed buildings are part of the visit, from the 1805 Bear Pits to the art deco Vivarium, the Singerie and the Great Aviary.
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 long 1898 hall in the Jardin des Plantes, part of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. The ground floor holds a herd of vertebrate skeletons, from fish and birds to a whale, lined up to show how bones adapt to the way an animal lives.
Upstairs, dinosaur skeletons, mammoths and fossils fill the galleries. It suits kids who love bones and big animals more than hands-on play.
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 5th is the Latin Quarter, and it fits a lot of kid-friendly ground into a few walkable streets. Think gardens with animals and old carousels, natural history galleries full of skeletons, riverside lawns, and rainy-day backups like kids' films and bowling. This list gathers the spots we've checked in the arrondissement, so you can plan a morning or a whole day without crossing the city.
The Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle turns 400 and is marking it with a dedicated program of events at its home in the Jardin des Plantes. The garden's long central perspective is planted with flowers in the anniversary's colors, and an exhibition traces four centuries of dialogue between the artists and naturalists of the Muséum.
It suits families who like a garden walk with some history along the way.
A walk-through Christmas show at the Grand Hôtel des Rêves in the Latin Quarter. Families follow young Yule from room to room, through a world of nisses, witches and magic wardrobes, tracing the very first Christmas present from an old toy shop to a post office at the far edge of the North Pole.
It suits kids who like fairy tales and can follow a story told in French.
Mon P'tit Loup Magique is a magic and storytelling show by magician Richard Atlas. Arthur goes looking for the so-called big bad wolf and finds him somewhere no one expects. Along the way come bits of famous wolf tales, old sayings, music, poetry and plenty of jokes.
It suits kids who like a story with a little fright in it that turns warm and funny.
L'Heure Joyeuse opened in 1924 as the first children's library in Paris. Its two floors hold a children's space and a teen and adult space, with about 25,000 books, CDs, DVDs and board games on open shelves.
Kids can borrow kamishibai paper-theater sets, play board games, use computers set aside for young readers, and join storytimes, workshops, film screenings and shows.
A small carousel inside the Jardin des Plantes where every mount is an extinct or endangered animal: a dodo, a thylacine, the giant elephant bird, a Barbary lion, a horned turtle and an early giraffe called a sivatherium, with a panda and a gorilla in the mix. A scientist at the natural history museum next door had it built in 1992 to get people talking about extinction.
Bowling Mouffetard has eight bowling lanes plus billiard tables, on Rue Mouffetard, the old market street of the Latin Quarter. Shoes and balls come with each game, and socks are required (disposable ones are handed out).
Weekend mornings and weekday afternoons draw families. Evenings, especially Friday to Sunday, turn into a grown-up night out with no bookings taken.
Studio des Ursulines is a single-screen cinema near the Luxembourg Gardens, open since 1926 and the first art-house cinema in France. Since 2003 it has programmed mainly for young audiences: animated features, short-film programs, ciné-concerts with live music, previews and festivals such as Mon Premier Festival for the youngest. Kids' films carry a starting age, many from 3 or 4, and some screenings come with workshops or meet-the-filmmaker talks.
The Panthéon is a domed 18th-century monument on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, designed by the architect Soufflot. Under the dome, Foucault's pendulum swings on a 67-meter wire, its path slowly shifting as the Earth turns.
Below the nave, the crypt holds the tombs of Victor Hugo, Marie Curie and other figures France chose to honor. Best for school-age kids curious about science or history.
A long, narrow garden on the Left Bank of the Seine, running along Quai Saint-Bernard between Pont de Sully and Place Valhubert. Kids get a playground, a skate park, ping-pong tables, a soccer pitch and street workout bars, with sculptures set along the riverside paths.
Opened in 1794, the Ménagerie is one of the oldest zoos in the world, set inside the Jardin des Plantes. It keeps about 500 animals from 122 species, mostly small and medium-sized: red pandas, snow leopards, orangutans, Seychelles tortoises, Malayan tapirs and keas.
The listed buildings are part of the visit, from the 1805 Bear Pits to the art deco Vivarium, the Singerie and the Great Aviary.
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 long 1898 hall in the Jardin des Plantes, part of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. The ground floor holds a herd of vertebrate skeletons, from fish and birds to a whale, lined up to show how bones adapt to the way an animal lives.
Upstairs, dinosaur skeletons, mammoths and fossils fill the galleries. It suits kids who love bones and big animals more than hands-on play.
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.
