What to do in Paris on a rainy day

Paris is built for wet days: the métro is underground, the museums are enormous, and the 19th-century arcades let you walk several blocks without an umbrella. Pick one paid anchor and one free filler, and keep the two within a few stops of each other so a downpour costs you minutes, not the afternoon.

The Louvre is the obvious anchor and the one that absorbs a whole morning. Enter at opening, head for the Denon wing first while it is quiet, and leave by the Carrousel du Louvre shopping arcade if it is still raining. The Musée d'Orsay suits a shorter visit and pairs with a covered walk through the Tuileries-side streets to Saint-Germain.

For something that feels less like a museum day, the Catacombs are fully underground and stay dry. Families do better at the Cité des Sciences in the 19th or the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution, both built for children to run around indoors. Check current status before you commit: the Centre Pompidou has been closed for renovation, so treat it as unavailable until its reopening is confirmed (check).

Most of these sit inside the first arrondissements or one métro ride away, so you can chain two or three without going far. The Louvre, Orsay, Sainte-Chapelle and the covered passages are all within roughly 30 minutes on foot of each other along the river (check); the Cité des Sciences and the Grande Galerie are the two outliers, in the 19th and 5th.

Coordinates below are approximate and mark the entrance or nearest métro stop.

Buy timed tickets the night before, not on the day. On wet weekends the Louvre and Orsay can sell out their morning slots (check), and the queue outside is the part that soaks you. Print or download the ticket before you leave the hotel; phone signal inside the Louvre's lower levels is patchy.

Dress for standing around rather than walking fast: a compact umbrella, a light waterproof layer and shoes that cope with wet pavements. Métro entrances can flood at the bottom of the stairs in heavy rain, so step around the puddles rather than through them.

Use the rain to eat properly. A long lunch or an afternoon in a café is a normal Paris response to bad weather, not a wasted day, and it costs less than another museum ticket. If you are travelling with children, book the science museum in advance and leave the afternoon free; if you are on a first trip, keep one indoor anchor per day and let the rest of the plan move.

Check closing days before you commit. Several national museums shut on Monday or Tuesday, and a few close on public holidays (check). If your only wet day falls on a closure, swap to a covered walk, a department store or a cinema.

Paris gets rain in every month, and late spring is often the wettest stretch, with May and June averaging the most rain days (check). Summer showers tend to be short, so a wet morning rarely ruins the day. Autumn and winter bring more grey, drizzly days that last longer, but they are also the quietest months for museums and often the cheapest for hotels (check).

If avoiding rain matters more than anything else, aim for late September and October, when the city is usually drier than spring and still warm enough to walk (check). If you are here in winter, plan around daylight: it gets dark early, so put the museum in the morning and the covered walk or the café in the late afternoon.

Whatever the season, keep the plan flexible. A wet day in Paris is a scheduling problem, not a reason to stay in the hotel.