FR · Curated travel guide
Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Palace of Versailles and 7 more — what each one is, and why it is worth the detour.
Chosen from everything Wikidata knows about France and ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions describe them, which is about as close to "famous" as open data gets. 2 are on UNESCO's World Heritage list.
Tower in Paris, France
Standing on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France, a lattice tower that takes its name from the engineer Gustave Eiffel; his company designed it and put it up between 1887 and 1889.
Photo: Benh LIEU SONG, Public domain
Art museum in Paris, France
A national museum of art in Paris, France, standing by the Seine on its Right Bank, within the 1st arrondissement, the city's first district. Its holdings include several of Western art's most canonical works, the Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa among them.
Photo: Benh LIEU SONG, CC BY 2.5
World Heritage
Former royal residence in Versailles, France
A château and historic monument in Versailles, in France's Yvelines department, southwest of Paris, the main home of the French kings Louis XVI, Louis XV and Louis XIV.
Photo: ToucanWings, CC BY-SA 3.0
Cathedral in Paris, France, built 1163–1345
Often just Notre-Dame: the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Paris, France, built in the Middle Ages on the Île de la Cité, in the city's 4th arrondissement, and also a basilica.
Photo: P e z i, CC BY-SA 3.0
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Art museum in Paris, France
A museum on the Left Bank of the Seine in Paris, France, housed in the old Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900.
Photo: Cheng-en Cheng from Taichung City, Taiwan, CC BY-SA 2.0
Castle in Loire Valley, France
A Flamboyant Gothic castle in the Loire Valley, built straight into the bed of the Loire. It stands in Montsoreau, a market town in France's Maine-et-Loire département, near Candes-Saint-Martin, Fontevraud-l'Abbaye, Chinon and Saumur.
Photo: Suavemarimagno, CC BY-SA 4.0
Avenue in Paris, France
Properly the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, an avenue in Paris's 8th arrondissement, France, 1.9 kilometres (1.2 mi) long and 70 metres (230 ft) wide. It runs from Place Charles de Gaulle, site of the Arc de Triomphe, in the west, to Place de la Concorde in the east.
Photo: SoWhat, CC BY-SA 2.0
World Heritage
Medieval cathedral in France
Dedicated to the Virgin Mary and mostly built between 1194 and 1220, a Catholic cathedral in Chartres, France, where the town's bishop has his seat, about 80 km southwest of Paris.
Photo: BT, Public domain
Highest mountain in the Alps (4,806.m)
A mountain of the Alps, 4,807.3 m above sea level, standing right on the border between France and Italy. It is Europe's highest mountain outside the Caucasus, Europe's second most prominent, and the 11th most prominent in the world.
Photo: Christian David, CC BY-SA 4.0
Fortress in Paris (1370 – 1789/90)
A medieval fortress in Paris, also called the Bastille Saint-Antoine. It played an important part in France's internal conflicts, and French kings used it as a state prison for most of its history.
Photo: Anonymous Unknown author, Public domain
Officially the French Republic, a country mainly in Western Europe. Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, the French West Indies, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, and many islands in the Indian Ocean and Oceania. On land, metropolitan France meets Belgium and Luxembourg (north), Germany (northeast), Switzerland (east), Italy and Monaco (southeast) and Andorra and Spain (south); across the sea to its northwest lies the United Kingdom.
Officially The French Republic.
Based on the Wikipedia article, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0: the facts are Wikipedia's, the wording is this site's.
This guide lists 10: Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Palace of Versailles and Notre-Dame de Paris and others. Palace of Versailles and Chartres Cathedral are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
By machine, from open data, with no human ranking them and nobody able to pay for a place on the list. Everything Wikidata records in France that is a building, a landform, a protected area or a tourist attraction, has coordinates, a photograph and an English Wikipedia article, is ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions wrote about it. Provinces, cities, airports, stations and stretches of sea shared with the neighbours are filtered out.
2 of the 10 in this guide: Palace of Versailles and Chartres Cathedral. That is not the full count for France, only the listed sites that made this guide.
French. The currency is EUR.
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Orange. Your phone picks whichever has the best signal where you are, the same way a local phone does.
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| Plan | Data | Valid | Price | Order |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2GB per day Cheapest | 2 GB | 1 day | $2.15 | Get it → |
| 2GB per day | 2 GB | 1 day | $2.86 | Get it → |
| 3GB for 15 days | 3 GB | 15 days | $3.04 | Get it → |
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| 5GB per day | 5 GB | 1 day | $4.12 | Get it → |
No app needed. Install by QR code before you fly, keep your own number for calls, and it connects the moment you land.
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