Notre-Dame Cathedral, roughly ten minutes away from our hotels – reopened in December 2024 after the fire that destroyed its interior and over five years of restoration to bring it back to life.

Tickets to visit the place were understandably difficult to get hold of, but things have calmed down a little now, and we went down recently to check out why every visitor to our beautiful city should go and take a look.

Oh, and we also explain how to get your free entrance ticket!

It’s great to finally see the square in front of Notre-Dame without all the Portakabins® and barriers that filled it during the long years of restoration, but don’t be surprised to find a bit of scaffolding and some cranes remaining: while the inside of the building is now finished and ready to visit, the exterior and surroundings are still being worked on. For example, the project to plant more trees and pedestrianise the area has only just begun.

We were nevertheless very excited to visit the cathedral again, and there’s no denying that from a distance or close up, Notre-Dame is still jaw-dropping.

Once inside, the sheer volume of the place is just as impressive, but now the stonework is perfectly clean, the paintings have been restored and the colours are brighter than ever. We gasped, several times.

So, how does one get to see this amazing cathedral?

Well, the first thing you should know is that it’s best, if you can, to book your free ticket on the official cathedral website. Tickets are available for the two upcoming days.

The opening hours of the cathedral are weekdays from 7.50am-7pm (10pm Thursdays) and weekends from 8.15am-7.30pm. However, tickets for the weekend and public holidays can go pretty quickly.

Our tip for getting your ticket without problems is… be ready at midnight European time, three days before! For example, if you want to visit the cathedral on Friday, be ready on Tuesday. At midnight, go to the site. Officially, it is now very early morning Wednesday, meaning that tickets for Thursday and Friday are available. Now choose your time, and you’ve succeeded!

But what happens if you weren’t able to reserve early enough, or the time you wanted to visit was no longer available? Well, booking a ticket is not obligatory. You can absolutely just go to the cathedral and wait in line. It will probably take longer to get in, but there’s still a high chance you will get in.

And if you want to know how to get to the cathedral from one of the hotels in our collection, just enter the name of the hotel in the box below and Citymapper will give you all the options for getting there by metro, bus and on foot.

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Notre-Dame Cathedral (here) is open weekdays from 7.50am-7pm (10pm Thursdays) and weekends from 8.15am-7.30pm

Admission: free!

Online booking (advisable): here

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