The best free museums in Paris

Let's start by making one thing clear: there are two types of free museums in Paris, those that are completely free, which do not charge a penny to enter, and those that have permanent exhibitions that are free to enter but with temporary exhibitions that do cost a fee. In this list there are both categories.

Tastes run the gamut, so we'll leave the full list of free museums in Paris, but we'll concentrate more on our favourites, the ones we recommend the most.

Don't be fooled by the name, this museum has little to do with the can-can. Bourdelle is the surname of a French sculptor, first name Antoine, who had a particular passion for making gigantic sculptures. He was a pupil of the great Auguste Rodin - whose museum is also very worthwhile, but not free - and his influences can be seen in some of his pieces.

This museum is inside Bourdelle's house-workshop, with gardens and rooms where the artist's huge sculptures grow. It also has a café-restaurant, Le Rhodia (https://lerhodia-bourdelle.fr/?utm_source=easyvoyage) - named after the sculptor's daughter - whose dishes tell the story of this great figure who has been somewhat neglected in the history of the arts.

One block off the iconic Champs Elysées, just before you reach the Pont Alexandre, this small palace of stunning architecture faces its sibling, the Grand Palais. In reality, this building was never a real palace, no one has ever lived here; it was built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900 (like most of Paris) and two years later it was instituted as the Musée des Beaux-Arts, to house the city's richest collections.

In the permanent collection you can see pieces of many styles, portraits of the 20th-century bourgeoisie, the Les Halles market (now a huge shopping centre) and others depicting everyday life in the last century, sacred art, classical sculptures, to name a few. But much of the charm of this place is its architecture, especially the grand salons, whose murals recount the history of Paris, and the inner garden, which has a very cute - and a bit expensive - café that is a good place to take a break.

Very close to the Trocadero, one of the most popular tourist stops in the City of Lights, is the museum complex comprising the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris and the Palais de Tokyo. The latter belongs to the State and hosts exhibitions of contemporary art of worldwide renown, but it does not concern us this time because it costs an entrance fee. The MAM, on the other hand, is free to enter to see its permanent collection, which is made up of extremely important pieces created in the 20th century.

Some of the great artists whose pieces are in this museum are Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, Pierre Bonnard, Sonia and Robert Delaunay. Raoul Dufy's impressive and very colourful mural covers a 600m2 curved wall, recounting the history of electricity and its impact on human life.

Paris is a beautiful city by any standards, but knowing the stories of its streets, corners and buildings makes it all the more interesting to visit. The Carnavalet Museum is dedicated to the history of Paris and is the oldest museum in this city of lights. In the heart of the Marais district, it opened its doors on 25 February 1880 in the Hôtel Carnavalet, one of the few examples - along with the inner courtyard of the Louvre - of Renaissance architecture in Paris.

While the museum's collection recounts the passage of time and what has happened in this magnificent city, the building also has a lot of history: it went from being a residence to being bought by the State during the time of the Great Works of Paris (when Haussman and Napoléon remodelled the city) to make room for this museum, bringing in pieces and pieces of other buildings that were demolished in these great architectural reforms. To admire it, there is nothing better than a drink on the terrace.

Stay in Paris

On the first floor of number 6 Place des Vosges, one of the most beautiful squares in Paris, lived the man who would bring to life the Hunchback of the North Dame and the stories of rebellion in Les Miserables, the great Victor Hugo.

For 16 years, from 1832 to 1848, the French writer occupied a flat with his family. Now, without being a faithful reproduction of what it was before, it is a museum dedicated to this essential figure of French culture. Seven adjoining rooms arrange the writer's life chronologically, anchored on his exile, telling the story of the before, during and after of this milestone in Victor Hugo's life.

Paris, before it was called Paris, was called Lutetia. Since 4500 BC human life has been recorded here, and the Romans, as they built their empire, made this location a major landmark. Before the palaces and gardens, the four-storey buildings and blue roofs, the grand boulevards and cathedrals, the city of lights was already making history.

The Arenas de Lutetia, in the Latin Quarter, is one of the few traces of that pre-Parisian city that we now love. It is something like a park, nestled between buildings with solariums, which may well go unnoticed, but in whose outlines the origins of this important capital are preserved.

At the foot of Montmartre hill, this house, which was built at the beginning of the 19th century, when the area was becoming the "new republic of arts and letters", contains an extraordinary collection of Romantic pieces, particularly by the Dutch painter Ary Scheffer, who settled in Paris, and the Romantic literary figure George Sand.

In addition to the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions, the mansion, in the Pigalle district, is a glimpse of life in former times. Moreover, the private garden is something of an oasis from the hustle and bustle of the area, with a classic French orangery structure converted into a charming tea room.

What would this city be without a museum dedicated to its fragrances? A stone's throw from the Opéra Garnier, in one of the most elegant districts of Paris, is the Musée du Parfum. The perfume house Fragonard - with almost a hundred years of history - created this space in the 1970s to showcase the processes involved in creating fragrances, as well as their history, which dates back to antiquity.

Pristine collections of materials that have travelled the world with the most coveted fragrances, objects of alchemy that gave life to the best blends, secret ingredients and other details nourish this very interesting museum, which shows a side of French culture that has had the greatest impact abroad: le parfum français.