Paris - Day 3: Sainte Chapelle, Louvre, Tuilieries, Musee l'Orangerie

Louvre Palace | Paris France | To Make Much of TIme

UPDATE: 2/4/2023

Note: Some links throughout our site are affiliate links, which means we may receive a small commission at no cost to you.

While we are pretty active travelers, we are not over-active travelers; we know when to go-go-go and when to go slow! With a full week in Paris staying at one place, it was a perfect excuse to explore the city at just the right pace. What that meant is we whiled away some mornings over croissants, coffee, and conversation. Bonus: the day was able to warm up a little before we ventured out. Our April in Paris was a tad on the nippy side!

By the time we ventured out on the third day of our trip, it was nearly noon, a badge of honor any sloth would wear proudly!

The day would lead us across Île de la Cité, through the Right Bank, back across the Seine, and down the Left Bank and through a variety of sites along the way, including: Sainte-Chapelle, The Louvre, Musee de l’Orangerie.

Sainte-Chapelle was on my must-visit list since I remembered learning about it in college in an art history class. I am so very glad it was because I suspect this is an oft-overlooked stop for people visiting Paris with so many more well-known spots. Like Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle is on Île de la Cité, and they are only a 5-10 minute walk apart. The trickiest thing about visiting Sainte-Chapelle was that a street sign was turned the wrong way, so we walked several extra blocks in a circle trying to find it! I think part of our problem is that we were looking for a church, but it is housed essentially in a courtyard of what is now the Palace of Justice facility. In general, we did not have to contend with significant lines to get in on this trip, and Sainte-Chapelle was no exception.

Saint-Chapelle Chapel | Paris France | To Make Much of TIme

Sainte-Chapelle was a royal chapel built in 1242, making it nearly 800 years old. This Gothic-style chapel was 250 years old when Columbus sailed! Visitors enter on the first floor, which at first seems impressive and houses a small gift shop, but the real awe-inspiring spot is upstairs in the upper-chapel. The original purpose of the lower chapel was for palace staff, and the upper one was for King Louis IX and his close family and advisers.

The most magnificent feature is the ocean of stained glass stretching 45-feet tall and creating a blue tint to the chapel’s interior. Depicted in the images within the stained glass is the procession of Christianity’s origins, from the Book of Genesis through Christ’s Resurrection. Built to house religious relics, which were so important to Christianity at the time, the most famous was Christ’s Crown of Thorns, which is now housed at Notre Dame, and cost King Louis more to purchase than the cost of building this chapel! While there, we discovered that concerts are held at the chapel on a periodic basis from mid-March through December, and we had missed one the evening before, the only one being held during our visit. Listening to a live performance of classical music in such a venue would be a great experience, so I’d recommend you check their schedule out here before visiting.

Next, we headed to the Louvre, a little less than a mile walk from Sainte-Chapelle. There were a few things that I had not realized before we visited: the main Louvre glass pyramid (which is flanked by smaller ones) is actually the museum’s entrance and the Louvre started out life as a fortress in the late 1100s to protect the city from the river access and became the royal palace in the 1500s.

We arrived at the Louvre mid-afternoon (2:30pm local, or 14:30 as they’d say) and found no line to enter, though the museum itself had a lot of visitors. I can only imagine how much more crowded it gets during peak season! I would recommend you familiarize yourself with the Louvre’s general layout before visiting. The museum is split into three wings: Richelieu, Sully, and Denon. The museum is 5-stories tall, with each wing having (to varying degrees) exhibits on each floor within it. The 5 floors are not 1-5 as you might expect but are labelled as -2, -1, 0, 1, and 2. As much as we love art, the most I can handle is usually a few hours in a museum at a time between the crowds and before I feel like I have gotten so inundated at looking at art that I stop getting as much out of it. The Louvre is as huge as people say it is and is worth its own dedicated blog, which we will add soon here.

Louvre Palace with a vendor | Paris France | To Make Much of TIme

Louvre Through the Gate | Paris France | To Make Much of TIme

For our visit, we selected the Denon wing where we saw the collection of Roman and Greek statues and French and Italian paintings, including the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is situated in a room entirely by itself, and while I have heard that others who have visited have struggled to even get into the room due to the crowds, we found ourselves there when the crowd took up only maybe 15% of the room. Even so, there were some very aggressive people! I literally got shoved by several people who wanted a front row view. I can’t think of any other art museum where I have been physically pushed like that! I’m not sure whether I’m proud of myself or embarrassed to admit that I shoved back (but only at the aggressors!). This, people, is how fights probably start. I’m surprised that we don’t see more (any) Mona Lisa brawls in the news.

The Mona Lisa really is a gorgeous painting.

Not a fan of crowds, we had had nearly all we could take and so decided to head a little off the beaten track to the bottom floor of Denon in a portion of the building that didn’t directly connect on that floor with the other wings. There we found our favorite spot - a collection of art from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas from 700 BC to 1900. The art was comprised primarily of masks and sculptures.

With our meal times all out of whack, we grabbed a late sandwich lunch around 4pm, at a spot next to Starbucks right as the restaurant was closing down. Yes, that’s right there is a Starbucks even in the Louvre! It’s possible that its caffeine is essential for museum endurance beyond what we could handle! Finding the exit to the Louvre was almost as challenging as figuring out its entrance. On the bottom floor (-2), the exit is situated just past the gift shop (of course) through a bit of an underground walkway that will spit you out in the Tuileries garden.

Exiting the Louvre after hours inside was like leaving a movie theater mid-afternoon where your eyes are startled by the bright sun and you’re surprised to find it is still daytime and the world has marched on without you.

The Tuileries Garden is all that is left of the prior spot of the Tuileries Palace that met its demise during the malcontent that began with the French Revolution. The Tuileries was the residential portion affiliated with the Louvre and the royal residence before Versailles took center stage. At the start of the French Revolution after the storming of the Bastille, Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, returned from Versailles to Tuileries to appear more present and approachable to their subjects. They ended up spending several years there under essentially house arrest before parting with their heads just outside, compliments of the French beheading weapon of choice, Madame Guillotine. Once established in power, Napoleon used the Tuileries Palace for his abode as did his eventual successor (with a lot of other mess mixed up in the middle), his nephew, who declared himself the leader under the name Napoleon III. That Napoleon led the country into war against the Prussians and after his defeat, citizens rose up to start their own government. It was during that era that one of these citizens drenched Tuileries in kerosene and laid waste to the prior physical representative of the monarchy. And like that, Tuileries Palace was gone. Today’s Tuileries Garden sits in its place.

Tulips at the Tuileries | Paris France | To Make Much of Time

The garden is a peaceful spot outdoors for Parisians to spend time outdoors meandering its paths and viewing its various statues. There are several small ponds and water features that were encircled by people sitting in chairs reading, napping, or engaged in conversations. A map of the garden layout is available here. Very little was in bloom during our early April visit, but we would love to see this garden in full color.

We walked the length of the garden to Musée de l'Orangerie, home to not only some of the largest but also the most interestingly presented paintings we have seen. L’Orangerie is made up of two oval, connected rooms housing a total of eight (four per room) of Monet’s waterlily paintings in massive form. If you are putting two-and-two together and realizing an oval room would have no flat walls on which to hang paintings, you are correct! Monet planned these paintings to purposefully fit into these oval rooms so that visitors can immerse themselves in the waterlily world and the two rooms (when viewed from above) would be situated in the symbol for infinity (∞). Who wouldn’t want to spend an infinity in this serene water world? With seating in the middle of each room, the museum even makes it comfortable to take it all in. Depending on how long you like to spend with art, Musée de l'Orangerie can be quite a quick visit. The building is small and primarily houses the two rooms with a basement space for additional exhibits. This museum is basically the anti-Louvre in experience.

Monet’s waterlilies are absolutely worth seeing. Sitting in the center of the room lets you imagine you are looking out large windows and onto the water gardens beyond.

After about a 1.3 mile walk back to our apartment, we were exhausted and in pain. No matter how comfortable you think your shoes are, that amount of standing and walking is bound to catch up with you, especially on rough city streets.

We decided to go with an easy option for dinner and returned to La Rotisserie d’Argent. We ordered their amazing Bordeaux that we’d enjoyed for lunch a few days before, ordered filet de boeuf which came with their crispy and delicious frites (fries). We each got a different pastry for dessert, fresh from their shop next door, Le Boulanger de la Tour, and washed it down with espresso to cap the night.

We also learned that espresso late at night is not ideal when you have an early wake-up in the morning. Oops. But why the early wake-up? Because we were off for a day of biking and touring Versailles!

Click the image below to save this post to Pinterest!