How to Visit Montmartre Paris in 2026: Tickets, Hours and Steps

There is no Montmartre ticket, and that changes everything

Start here, because it reframes the whole day. Montmartre is not an attraction with a gate. It is the 18th arrondissement of Paris, 130 metres up, and the streets, the staircases, the painters’ square and the view over the entire city are open to anybody at any hour for nothing. The basilica on the summit is free to walk into as well, every day from 6.30am to 10.30pm.

Once you know that, the question stops being “how do I get in” and becomes “what is actually worth paying for up here”. There are four answers, and Montmartre guided tours are a fifth.

What the four real tickets cost

Of those four, the Musée de Montmartre is the one people most often wish they had budgeted for, because the gardens alone are a €6 ticket. Everything else — Place du Tertre, Le Mur des Je t’aime, the vineyard railings, Montmartre Cemetery, the basilica nave, the view — costs nothing. The full breakdown with sources is on the visitor information page.

Getting up: 222 steps, one funicular, or the lift at Abbesses

The climb is the part people underestimate. From Square Louise-Michel to the parvis is 222 steps, and in July at midday that is real work. Three ways round it:

• The funicular. Built in 1891 for exactly this reason. One Métro-Train-RER ticket — €2.55 as of January 2026 — buys one ride in one direction, and it is included in the Navigo pass and Paris Visite.
• Abbesses on line 12. One of the deepest stations in Paris, but it has a lift, and it surfaces most of the way up the hill. This is the answer if stairs are the problem rather than the walk.
• Lamarck-Caulaincourt on line 12. The quiet back way in, past the vineyard, with a gentler gradient than the south face.

Which station you use also decides where you end up, and the five entrances put you on completely different sides of the village. The getting-around page compares them properly, and the map shows where the tours meet.

How long to allow

Two hours gets you the basilica, Place du Tertre and the best of the lanes at a pace that lets you stop, which is exactly why almost every guided walk here is built to that length. Half a day adds a museum or a long lunch. A full day lets you walk Montmartre Cemetery and the vineyard streets as well, and still sit on the steps for the sunset.

When to come, and when not to

Before 10am, at any time of year. Place du Tertre fills with coach groups by mid-morning and does not empty again until late afternoon in summer. The second-best window is the last hour before sunset — and that hour moves five hours across the year, from 4.55pm on 21 December to 9.57pm on 21 June, which changes what you can fit into an afternoon more than any other single fact about this hill. The month-by-month figures are on the weather page.

What to bring, and what not to

• Shoes for cobbles. Several tour listings ask for them by name.
• A layer more than the forecast suggests in winter. The top of the hill is exposed, and it is colder up there than on the boulevard.
• Cash. The bakeries and the painters are not all card-only.
• Not a car. Fifteen streets on the upper Butte are a pedestrian zone where through traffic is banned and vehicles crawl at about six kilometres an hour.

Do you need a guided tour?

No — and saying so is the honest answer for a neighbourhood that costs nothing to walk. What a guide buys is an edited route and the difference between looking at a doorway and knowing that Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon behind it. Guided walks start at $23 for ninety minutes to two and a half hours. A food tour buys something more concrete: it replaces a meal, at bakeries and cheese counters you would walk straight past.

If you would rather decide with the numbers in front of you, the guide to choosing between the three formats sets them side by side, and the FAQ answers the rest.

Three mistakes worth not making

Arriving at Blanche and walking up in July. It is a fifteen-minute climb on the sunny side of the hill, and there is a funicular four hundred metres east of you doing the same job for one metro fare.

Booking a dome ticket into a tight schedule. The dome closes at midday for the staff break, closes altogether in bad weather, and has 280 steps and a queue. Treat it as something you do if it is open, not as a fixed point in your afternoon.

Doing Place du Tertre at noon. The square is genuinely worth seeing and genuinely unbearable in the middle of a summer day. Come before ten, or come at seven in the evening, and it is a different place. If that means an early start you would not otherwise make, one of the guided walks is built round exactly that.

A first visit, in order

1. Metro to Anvers, then the funicular up.
2. The basilica — free, and give it half an hour.
3. The dome, if it is open and the queue is short.
4. Place du Tertre, then out the far side before the crowd builds.
5. Down through rue de l’Abreuvoir, past La Maison Rose and the vineyard.
6. Le Mur des Je t’aime, then out at Abbesses.

Come early, buy the dome ticket and nothing else, and let the hill do the rest. Every guided walk and food tour on the Butte is listed on Montmartre Paris Tours.

Guided walks that cover this route

Paris Montmartre Walking Tour Best Art Culture and Food

Ninety minutes and the shortest guided format on the hill, from Rue des Abbesses. The one to book when Montmartre is half of a bigger Paris day.

From $37 per person

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Paris: Montmartre Highlights Walking Tour with a Local Guide

Two hours twenty from Place Saint-Pierre, stopping properly at five places. Starts under the basilica, so the climb happens before the tour does.

From $27 per person

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Montmartre for Art Lovers - Walking tour with Expert Guide

The cheapest guided walk here at $23, starting at the cemetery gate with entry included. Trivia questions and a sketching session break up the climb.

From $23 per person

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