By Catherine Bennett

Paris is a global capital of art and culture. It’s also one of the most visited cities, and for newbies and regulars alike it can feel hard to find places that escape the tourist influx. Yet if you’re willing to try neighborhoods beyond the usual beat or hunt out smaller art spaces dedicated to single artists or themes, there are rewards to be reaped.

Albert Kahn’s world of images and a serene Paris home base

Nothing less than the whole world lies at the end of metro line 10. At least that was Albert Kahn’s dream: in 1909, the banker and philanthropist sent a team of around a dozen camera operators across the globe to document what he described as ‘the customs and methods of human endeavor, whose inexorable disappearance is just a question of time.’ The resulting 72,000 photographs – the world’s largest collection of autochromes – capture the beauty and diversity of landscapes and peoples from Alsatian villages to Japanese temples, Mongolian hunters to Syrian traders. Today, his former estate in Boulogne-Billancourt, to the west of Paris, is home to a jewel of a museum – close enough to be an easy train ride away, yet beyond the usual tourist circuit. Leave plenty of time to wander the landscaped garden, too. If this quieter corner of Paris proves difficult to leave, Maison Montespan, an Airbnb Luxe home in the neighboring 16th, whose butler, indoor heated pool, and rooftop terrace, reflects the area’s unhurried spirit.

Photography and Montmartre’s artistic past

Another must-see for photography lovers is the small, independent museum LE BAL, tucked away down a dead-end street behind the Place de Clichy in the north of the city. LE BAL has a vibrant program of exhibitions, talks, screenings, and workshops dedicated to photography, video, film, and new media and is currently showing highlights from The Wilson Collection, including 20th-century greats like Daido Moriyama, Francesca Woodman, and Walker Evans. But before it was an exhibition space, LE BAL was a community project; its educational center, La Fabrique du Regard, has worked in more than 275 neighborhoods and with more than 650 artists to teach thousands of young people about the power of the image and how they might document their lives.

A short walk up the hill from LE BAL, the Musée de Montmartre sits under the ice-cream cone spires of the Sacré-Coeur basilica. Despite its proximity to the well-trodden route through Place du Tertre, the museum is often missed off a Paris itinerary. Yet this building is where art history was made: Auguste Renoir, Suzanne Valadon, Maurice Utrillo, and Raoul Dufy (among others) lived on this street. An exhibition about the area’s rich cultural past and a recreation of Valadon’s cluttered, glass-roofed studio give a sense of the area’s artistic effervescence at the turn of the century.

From this viewpoint, visitors can look over the Montmartre vineyard spilling down the hill toward the iconic cabaret, Lapin Agile, where artists and writers such as Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and Guillaume Apollinaire were regulars. It continued to attract a bohemian crowd long after they’d moved on. Catapult 50 years into the future, and you’d occasionally find legendary French singer Serge Gainsbourg playing piano there before he landed his regular slot at the cabaret Milord l’Arsouille in the first arrondissement.

From Gainsbourg’s home to a stay in Lagerfeld’s atelier

Gainsbourg’s home turf, though, was the Left Bank, and those he dragged back to his townhouse on Rue de Verneuil included friends, lovers, and the police officers whose badges he kept as souvenirs. You can see those very badges at his home at number 5 bis, which was opened to the public in 2023. It feels like Gainsbourg could walk in at any moment – the house has been effectively preserved in aspic since his death in 1991, as his daughter Charlotte could not bear to move anything. Packs of filterless Gitanes, the grand Steinway piano, a bust of Jane Birkin, and empty wine bottles are all exactly as he left them. A breathy, intimate audio recording by Charlotte in both French and English guides visitors around the low-lit rooms. On the other side of the street, a museum, bookshop, and café-piano bar called Le Gainsbarre (the name of Gainsbourg’s drunken, chaotic alter-ego) prolong the singer’s myth. Visiting an artist’s home is an intimate experience, but staying in one goes further still: Karl Lagerfeld’s former atelier, available to stay in through Airbnb Luxe, is a chance to truly immerse yourself in the designer’s space. Its custom sculptural shelving and steel-encased bed hold the precise, unsparing geometry of someone who allowed nothing in a room to be accidental.

Giacometti’s studio, with an art-filled stay in a hôtel particulier

House museums offer a sense of getting close to a famous artist, offering a sometimes reassuring insight into the everyday mess in which they lived and worked. You can’t get more intimate than sculptor Alberto Giacometti’s famously small studio, located in Paris’s other historical artistic hub of Montparnasse. It has been faithfully reconstructed at the Institut Giacometti, inside a beautiful Art Deco mansion a short walk from where he actually worked – thanks to the zeal of his widow Annette Arm, who kept the room totally intact, from his scrawlings on the walls to his paint palette and the cigarette butts in ashtrays. You can see a selection of his works in rotating exhibitions alongside the recreated studio. Nearby in the Latin Quarter, an artistic French apartment in a 1910 hôtel particulier offers a different kind of immersive experience: a private home with a marble fireplace, four-meter-high ceilings, and walls hung with its owner's personal art collection.

Art and architecture, from the Left Bank to the Marais

Still on the Left Bank, the Institut du Monde Arabe is another museum with impressive architecture – although on a somewhat larger scale. Designed by Jean Nouvel (who also designed the new site of the Fondation Cartier in central Paris) and the agency Architecture Studio, the building’s south façade is covered with 240 panels of metallic mashrabiya screens that automatically adjust to filter sunlight – a homage to the decorative latticework found across the Islamic world. This imposing building on the banks of the Seine celebrates art and culture from the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond. Exhibitions are often a punchy mix of music, visual arts, objects, and textiles, and the remit is broad: past shows include Uzbek silks and jewelry, archeological finds saved from the ruins of Gaza, and contemporary Queer culture in the Arab world.

Any contemporary art lover in Paris must head to the Marais neighborhood, known for the huge number of galleries and museums dotted among its hôtels particuliers. One of its typically chic, if less obvious, cultural hang-outs can be found in the 16th-century Hôtel de Marle, between the Musée Carnavalet and the Musée Picasso: the Institut Suédois, Sweden’s only cultural institute abroad. A rehang of the permanent collection in 2025 narrowed its scope to 18th-century French and Swedish artists portraying the turmoil of the Age of Enlightenment, but the temporary exhibitions are the real draw. On October 20, leading contemporary Swedish artist Andreas Eriksson’s paintings are being shown in dialogue with turn-of-the-century artist, traveler, and fellow Swede, Ivan Aguéli. There’s also a peaceful garden and famed cinnamon buns and Swedish sandwiches from the on-site Café Fika. It’s the perfect spot for hungry art lovers at the end of a day exploring Parisian culture’s outer reaches.