In short: guided tours in Paris
- How the page works: classic neighborhood walks, Emily in Paris tours, bike tours, food tours and a few special tours, all in English.
- When to book: good tours fill up, especially during school holidays and in summer, so book a few days ahead.
- Private or group tour: a private tour follows your pace and suits families. A group tour is cheaper but runs on a fixed schedule.
- What to check first: the length of the tour, the meeting point, and whether entry tickets to the sites are included in the price or bought separately.
- Rather go on your own: an audio tour app or my Paris itineraries are a cheap way to explore at your own pace.
- Who it suits best: first-time visitors, and anyone coming back to Paris who wants to get to know a neighborhood without famous attractions.
Guided tours in Paris are in high demand, and for good reason. A guided tour isn’t always cheap, but it can upgrade your trip in a big way. Just as a little truffle lifts any sauce, a tour with a good guide adds that special extra to your visit. A skilled guide who knows the streets of Paris and its many-sided culture (history, art, fashion, food and more) can add real depth to plain wandering around the City of Light (which is lovely in itself).
With a good guide you get to know Paris from the inside and discover plenty of secrets that regular tourists tend to miss.
The big problem is that anyone can call themselves a tour guide. It’s a profitable business, so there are quite a few people out there who sell a mediocre product at a high price. My goal is to make sure you don’t fall for them, and only go out with the best.
On this page I picked a selection of guided tours in English for you: classic neighborhood walks, bike tours, food tours and a few tours with a twist, plus an audio tour app and my tips for getting the most out of a group tour. Good tours are in demand, so I recommend booking ahead. And if you would rather skip a guided tour altogether, you can always explore on your own with my Paris itineraries (much better than ending up with a bad guide).
Guided tours in Paris in English
GetYourGuide is known for its huge range of tours in Paris and its very reasonable prices. Below you’ll find a few examples from its enormous selection: guided tours in Paris that I handpicked for you.
Emily in Paris
Are you a devoted fan of Emily in Paris, and now you want to walk through Paris in her footsteps? Below you’ll find a series of tours that may suit you. Worth knowing: these tours received permission from the show’s producers to use the “Emily in Paris” brand, which is a mark of quality and a good sign that you’ll enjoy an authentic tour.
Classic tours
-
🎓 Latin Quarter tour
Discover the oldest and liveliest quarter of Paris, with its Roman ruins and Gothic churches.
-
🎨 Montmartre walking tour
The bohemian atmosphere, the Sacré-Cœur and the picturesque little streets.
-
🛍️ Marais tour
The old quarter, its mansions, its boutiques and its Jewish history.
-
-
⛪ Sainte-Chapelle and the Conciergerie
A guided tour of the two Gothic gems of the Île de la Cité.
Bike tours
I’ll admit that I prefer to explore Paris on foot, but if you’re in a hurry and want to see as much of Paris as possible in as little time as possible, a bike tour is not a bad option at all. Here are a few recommended tours:
Food tours in English
Paris has all kinds of food tours (sweet tours, savory tours, market tours and many more), so I wrote a whole article about food tours in Paris. But if you don’t have much time or patience to search, here are a few highly recommended tours in English:
Special tours
If you’re looking for a tour with a twist, here are a few options that are not bad at all:
-
🎶 Tour with an opera singer
A one-of-a-kind musical tour of Montmartre with an opera singer.
-
An audio tour app for Paris
Want to explore Paris at your own pace and still enjoy detailed explanations about the places you visit? WeGoTrip offers an app that lets you listen to explanations (in English) about the places you’re walking through, with a whole series of walking routes in Paris. A nice and fairly cheap way to discover the city.
5 tips for group guided tours in Paris
Picked a guided tour? Excellent!
Before you go to meet the guide and the group, let me give you a few tips, based on my own experience and on the experience of other guides, that will help you get the most out of the tour you chose:
Be curious
An excellent guide (and I only recommend those) holds an endless amount of knowledge, and there is nothing they love more than sharing it with the people on the tour. So do a little homework (for example, learn the basics of the history of Paris) and come with questions. I promise you’ll leave with a wonderful feeling of having learned something, the guide will enjoy it too, and may even give you a few extras that are not part of the original tour.
On the other hand, if the culture of France (in all its shades) doesn’t interest you, and all you want is to check off the main sights, skip the guided tour and save quite a bit of money. This advice is doubly true if you’re traveling with children and teenagers. Instead of dragging them to a tour they won’t be interested in anyway, wait a few years and come back to Paris, this time without them. They and the guides will thank you.
Come prepared
Check the weather in Paris carefully and dress for it, so you’re not too hot or too cold. Since this is a walking tour, usually several kilometers long, wear the most comfortable shoes you own. It would be a shame to have the tour ruined by the wrong clothes or shoes.
Arrive a little early
Running through metro tunnels or Paris streets while trying to reach the meeting point on time may help you burn the calories of the éclair you ate yesterday, but it adds needless stress (especially if you’re late or about to be). Most guides start the tour only a few minutes after the set time, so if you’re late there’s a good chance you’ll miss the tour, which would be a pity (especially if you paid in advance and lose your money as well).
So I strongly recommend arriving at the meeting point 15 to 30 minutes before the tour starts. At worst, you’ll have a small coffee, take a short stroll around the area, or get to enjoy the guide’s company a little longer than the others, because the guide will of course arrive before the set time too.
Be considerate of the other people in the group
Keep in mind that tours in large groups (8 to 15 people or more) are cheaper, but there is almost no flexibility, so you have to walk exactly at the group’s pace and keep eye contact with the guide so you don’t lose them (on these tours you usually pay at the start, so if you lose the group because you stepped into a shop while everyone else moved on, the guide won’t come looking for you).
On boutique tours with small groups (usually up to 7 people), the pace is more relaxed and the route more flexible. In that case, so the tour doesn’t turn into a world war, I strongly recommend being considerate of the people walking with you, even if they need the restroom exactly 5 minutes after you all left a café, or want to stop for a few minutes to peek into an interesting pâtisserie. If you do, I promise others will be considerate of you too when you ask to sit down for a small coffee or take a peek into a charming boutique in the Marais.
And most important: in my experience, a big part of the fun of a tour is the company, and more than once complete strangers have bonded on my tours and become good friends by the end (some even stayed in touch after they went back home). So being polite and considerate only increases your chances of making new friends, and that’s a serious bonus.
Bring plenty of good spirits (the most important tip)
Remember, the main goal of the tour is not to check boxes or leave with some kind of certificate (there’s no exam at the end). The only goal of the tour is to enjoy it. So come with a smile and savor every romantic square, sweet pastry and juicy story to the fullest. At the same time, gracefully ignore all the little things that can happen on any tour (for example, rain that starts pouring in the middle of the tour, or a small shop whose owner decided to go on vacation exactly when you walked by).
I promise that if you do, your enjoyment will be complete, and so will the value for the money you paid. And that’s exactly why you came to this page, isn’t it?
