Inside the Paris for Art Lovers Guide: What You Get for $9.99

I'm Carol Cram, novelist and arts travel writer, and founder of Art In Fiction, a curated database of 2,700+ novels inspired by the arts. Artsy Traveler contains affiliate links for products and services I personally use and recommend. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Please read the Disclosure for more information.

I’ve been going to Paris for decades, and somewhere along the way I noticed a pattern. The museums everyone tells you to see are wonderful, but can also be overcrowded and a bit of a chore to tour. The museums few mention are where the real magic happens, where you can sit in front of a painting for twenty minutes without anyone nudging you along.

That gap between the Paris everyone visits and the Paris that rewards you with memorable experiences is what led me to write Paris for Art Lovers: The Artsy Traveler’s Guide, a 55-page downloadable guide that’s available now in my shop.

This isn’t a list of the same ten attractions you’ll find in every other Paris guide. It’s the Paris I visit and re-visit.

• Thirteen museums, from the Musée d’Orsay (yes, go) to the Musée Zadkine (you’ve probably never heard of it, and you should go)
• Concerts in spaces that will stop you mid-thought, like an evening at Sainte-Chapelle with its stained glass glowing overhead
• The art supply shop that sold pastels to Picasso
• The cafés where the point isn’t the coffee: it’s the hour you spend not looking at your phone

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What’s Inside

Part One: The Museums

Full coverage of the big names plus nine smaller museums most visitors never find, with practical tips on tickets, timing, and how to avoid the worst of the crowds

Part Two: The Artsy City Beyond Museums

Vernissages, concerts, bookshops, and the art of doing absolutely nothing in a Parisian café

Part Three: Practical Paris

Where to stay, how to get around, and when to go if you’d rather not fight a tour group for a view of a Monet

Read Before You Go

A novel recommendation for nearly every chapter, pulled from my Art In Fiction database, so you can read your way into the city before you ever set foot in it

Appendix

The comprehensive appendix includes a museum tracker, a reading checklist, and space to record visits to concerts, gallery openings, favorite restaurants, and shopping.

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The Perfect Artsy Traveler Day in Paris Itinerary

Also available in my shop is the Perfect Day in Paris itinerary, a single carefully built day that moves at a human pace through the historic heart of the city: a morning walk on the Île de la Cité, the Musée de Cluny and its Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, an unhurried Left Bank afternoon, and an evening concert at Sainte-Chapelle. Think of Perfect Day as the highlight reel and the Paris Artsy Guide as the whole season.

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Who This Guide is For

This guide is for the traveler who would rather spend an hour in one quiet gallery than sprint through five crowded ones. If you’ve ever stood in line for the Mona Lisa and wondered if there was a better way to spend that hour, this guide is for you.

Still mapping out your itinerary? Start with my five-step planning guide, then come back here.

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Why Not Just Use a Free Blog Post or Rick Steves?

Fair question. Here’s an honest comparison.

Free blog posts (including the ones on this site) are a great starting point, but they’re scattered. You’ll need to read fifteen of them, cross-reference opening hours that may be out of date, and build your own itinerary from scratch. That’s hours of work I’ve already done for you.

Rick Steves’ Paris guide is excellent for the major sights and practical logistics, but it’s written for a general audience. You won’t find the Musée Zadkine in it, or a museum-by-museum breakdown designed specifically for art lovers who want to skip the crowds and slow down in front of the works that matter to them.

And don’t get me wrong, I adore Rick Steves!

Guided tours get you inside with an expert, which has real value, but they run on someone else’s schedule, in someone else’s group, at someone else’s pace. If you’ve ever been hurried past a painting you wanted to linger on, you know the frustration.

Also, you won’t find many (if any) guided tours of the small museums. Most tours focus on the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre.

I’ve built Paris for Art Lovers for travelers like me: independent art lovers who wants the curation of a guidebook with the freedom to set their own pace. It won’t tell you where to eat dinner or how to get from the airport, but it will tell you which thirteen museums are worth your time, when to go, and what to read before you get there.

What to read? A unique feature of Paris for Art Lovers is the inclusion of several novels inspired by the art and artists of Paris, from Monet to Picasso and a great many more. You won’t find these novels in a typical guide book. They’re all from my sister site, Art In Fiction, a curated database of 2600+ novels inspired by the arts.

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Get the Guide

If that sounds like the trip you want, Paris for Art Lovers is available now for $9.99 as an instant PDF download, and includes the Perfect Artsy Traveler Day itinerary as a bonus.