Notre-Dame Paris: Free Entry, Time Slot and Tower Tickets

Notre-Dame sells no ticket for the cathedral. You take a free time slot online, and the only money you spend goes on the towers, which cost €16. The cathedral and the towers are two separate visits, and getting that straight before you arrive saves more time than any shortcut.

Entry to the cathedral is free, and the free slot is booked online two to three days ahead on the cathedral's own site. You can also walk in without a slot, though that means the queue. Anyone selling a skip-the-line ticket for the cathedral is selling something you do not need, and the people who sell it are resellers, not the cathedral.

The towers are a different matter. Their tickets are sold online only, on the towers' own site, with their own slot and their own entrance. Towers: €16. There is no lift, so the view is paid for twice, once at the ticket page and once on the stairs.

The cathedral and the towers are two visits with two entrances and two time slots. There is no ticket to buy for the cathedral.

When to come and which entrance to use

The cathedral enters through the west façade, and the towers are reached from the north side, on Rue du Cloître Notre-Dame. Read your slot confirmations with both in mind, because the two visits begin at different corners of the building and the walk between them is not short. Cathedral hours: Mon–Fri 7:50 am–7 pm (Thursdays to 10 pm), weekends 8:15 am–7:30 pm. The last entry is half an hour before closing.

The quieter windows are Tuesday and Wednesday before 9:30 am and Thursday evenings between 7 and 10 pm. Weekends between 10 am and 4 pm are best avoided. If you have a free choice, take a weekday morning and save the wander around the Île de la Cité for the afternoon.

Reopened in December 2024, the cathedral looks different from the version most people remember. The limestone on the pillars of the nave and in the ambulatory has been cleaned and is pale, almost bright, and it changes the whole interior. At the crossing stands a new bronze altar by Guillaume Bardet, made in 2024. Walk the nave from the west door, look at the pillars first and the altar second, and let the rest of the interior come to you.

Look up for the south rose window, which holds glass from the thirteenth century. It is worth standing under until your eyes adjust to the colour, since the glass does most of its work slowly. Outside, the new spire follows Viollet-le-Duc's drawing of 1860, so what you see on the skyline is a copy of a nineteenth-century idea and not the medieval roof.

The towers reopened on 20 September 2025, after six years of work, and the climb is long and tight. Book it as a second visit with its own slot, ideally after a break on the quay. The flying buttresses are best seen from the Square Jean XXIII, behind the cathedral, and you get the shape of the building without paying for a single step.

Where to stayThe Île de la Cité and its quays make a convenient base, with the cathedral a few minutes away on foot. The where-to-stay page compares them with the other districts.Where to stay in Paris →

When you only have an hour

An hour is enough for the cathedral and a walk round it, and leaving the towers for another trip is not a failure. Cut in the order below and the visit still holds together, with the cathedral as the part you keep and the towers as the part you postpone.

• Go in without the towers, since the cathedral is the free part.
• Take your slot online before you leave the hotel.
• Look at the flying buttresses from the Square Jean XXIII.
• Choose a Thursday evening, when the queue is shorter.

Getting aroundNavigo Easy and the metro carry you to the island, and the page on getting around explains how.Getting around Paris →