Paris Is Always a Good Idea, But Especially This Year

AUDREY HEPBURN ONCE said, “Paris is always a good idea.” But it’s especially a good time to go now. The City of Light is poised to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games and the Paralympics with French flair while iconic venues across the city spruced up for the fête.

BMX freestyle will occupy the Place de la Concorde, taekwondo kicks off in the Grand Palais, while the Trocadero hosts cycling events and archery heats aim for the Invalides. Swim meets will take place in the actual Seine, after a €1.4 billion river-clean-up project.

The lead-up to the 2024 Olympics has created more than 1,700 projects in the public buildings of Paris at a cost of around €180 million. Loads of additional new architecture and design projects include a new amphitheater and redesign of the Eiffel Tower, the sustainable Olympic village, and other immersive installations visitors can experience.

What to Do in Paris 2024 Aside from the Olympics: Coolest Arts, Culture, Museums, Exhibits and More

While Olympic committees are busy trying to look more responsible, sustainable, and inclusive than ever, the museums of Paris are teeing up for a smorgasbord of major art events and exhibitions running throughout the year. Visit before April 2 to enjoy the Mark Rothko exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton; Musée d’Orsay will host the landmark “Paris 1874, Inventing Impressionism” exhibit that showcases the rebellious works of Monet, Degas, Pissaro, Renoir and Cézanne long before they became the establishment bluechip artists we know today. The show highlights 130 works featuring this “clan of rebels.”

The Fondation Cartier will launch a new branch in the iconic Louvre Saint-Honoré building designed by Jean Nouvel and set to open in 2025.  Le Quai de la Photo is a new 700-square-meter floating art center on the Seine in the 13th arrondissement, dedicated to contemporary photography, with a sunny rooftop and exhibitions held throughout the year.

Major heads-up: the Centre Pompidou will close for five years in 2025 for a gut refurb, making 2024 the last year to see it as is. Before it does, it will lay down a final tribute to minimalist Brancusi with an extensive exhibition of nearly 200 sculptures, photos, drawings, films and archive documents, making it the largest retrospective devoted to the European sculptor.

Other major exhibits coming to Paris in the autumn of 2024 include the immersive exhibit “Frida Kahlo, ¡Viva La Vida!” at the Grand Palais, and “Arte Povera” at the Bourse de Commerce, which traces the radical Italian art movement from its 1960’s origins.

Shoppers will want to check out “The Birth of Department Stores” at MAD x Cité de l’Architecture, a collab double-exhibition revisiting the history of department stores like Galeries Lafayette, Bon Marché, Samaritaine, and Printemps Haussmann, which examines both the socio-economic and architectural histories of these shopping palaces.

Music lovers won’t miss out either. Not only can you go dancing in the street on the newly christened Rue David Bowie in the 13th arrondissement, but you can check out an homage to the late musician’s work at Théâtre Sarah-Bernardt, which after a major seven-year renovation recently reopened featuring a variety of concerts, orchestral productions, theatrical and ballet performances. Maison Gainsbourg also opened to the public in September 2023, 30 years after the death of Serge Gainsbourg, in the house where he lived. It invites chanteurs and chanteuses to get up-close-and-personal with his oeuvre, browse the bookshop, and nurse a rosé or pastis at Gainsbarre, chill café by day, moody piano bar by night replete with chartreuse velvet banquettes, a Gainsbourg-inspired cocktail menu and dishes like mashed potatoes and caviar, croque monsieurs, and foie gras and fig. 

Where to Stay in Paris in 2024: the Best New Luxury Hotels in the City of Light

A crop of new hotels have opened in Paris in time for the Olympics, too, and many of them come from some of the best, most luxurious brands in the world. The recently opened 109-room Hôtel Dame des Arts in Saint- Germaine-des-Prés offers a nestlike rooftop bar, spacious modern balconies, and junior suites with stunning Eiffel views. Another Saint-Germain newcomer is the 34-room Villa-des-Prés which opened in December 2023 in a former private mansion, with cut stone balconies, a garden bar with a garden patio, a spa with pool, a gym, a sauna and a treatment room. Swiss jeweler Chopard inaugurated its first hotel, 1 Place Vendôme, this past autumn continuing the post-pandemic trend of luxury brand micro hotels (Audemars Piguet, Christian Louboutin, Bulgari, Armani, and Fragonard). The three-story, 17-suite Chopard Hotel is donned with Warhol and Chagall paintings and replaces the Hôtel Vendôme in Paris, in the city’s elegant 17th-century square, originally built to honor the Sun King, Louis XIV.

Other new hotels include the opulent and lush Bulgari Hotel Paris on Avenue George V, and the whopping 957-room Pullman Montparnasse, in a glassy tower. It’s the largest Pullman in Europe, with an uber-modern concept of an indoor food court full of comptoirs and coffee vendors in its mod lobby and spacious well lit rooms occupying the upper floors offering killer Paris views. It’s just one piece of the ongoing Montparnasse Masterplan which connected the scattered neighborhood with a series of parks and developments like Gaîté Montparnasse, the MVRDV-designed transformation of a city block that houses the Food Society project, the largest food hall in Europe with more than 35 restaurant counters in a 5000 square meter space spread over several floors.

Hottest Restaurant to Book in Paris in 2024

If that whets your appetite, you may want to book a table at Paris’s iconic Michelin-star restaurant Tour d’Argent, which reopened in 2023 after an 18-month renovation. The historic restaurant dates back to 1582, claiming to be Paris’s oldest, with a 320,000-bottle wine cellar, and its world-famous pressed duck dish with tonka bean and duck liver sauce. But it received extra attention aftering serving as the inspiration for Disney’s Ratatouille. More famous than the restaurant’s fare, though, is its view of the Notre Dame, which is finally reopening in December 2024 after a fire collapsed its spire. It’s a  reminder that palimpsestic Paris is an ongoing work of art itself worth visiting over and over. 

Lede and hero images courtesy of Bulgari Hotels.

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