Paris itinerary for 4 days: Louvre, Versailles, and what it costs

Short answer: four days in Paris is two museum mornings — the Louvre on day 2, the Orsay on day 4 — one full Versailles day with an evening Eiffel Tower slot, and a departure morning that stays empty. Three timed slots decide whether it works: the Louvre slot (the museum closes Tuesdays), the Versailles Passport (the estate closes Mondays), and an Eiffel Tower time. Book all three before you fly. Every price in this plan was read at the operator’s own page on 29 October 2026, including the ones most guides get wrong for US travelers.

The two 2026 price changes most guides still miss

On 14 January 2026, Paris’s big institutions split their ticket prices by residency. The Louvre now charges €32.00 to visitors who are neither citizens nor residents of the European Economic Area, and €22.00 to EEA visitors — rates listed on the Louvre’s own tickets page (checked 29 October 2026). Versailles introduced its 2026 price list the same day: the Passport ticket costs €35.00 in high season (1 April to 31 October) with a €3.00 discount for EEA nationals or residents (Château de Versailles, checked 29 October 2026).

For a US audience this matters because the older, cheaper figures still circulating — €22 for the Louvre, €32 for Versailles — are now the EEA rates, not the walk-up price a US client pays. When an agency quotes a Paris trip from a two-year-old blog post, it underquotes the two headline tickets by €13 combined.

The second change is on transit: the Paris Visite pass no longer comes in zone tiers — it covers all zones, including both airports and Versailles — and it is sold for 1, 2, 3 or 5 consecutive days. There is no 4-day pass (Île-de-France Mobilités, checked 29 October 2026). A four-day trip faces a deliberate gap, which the math section below prices out.

The 4-day Paris itinerary, day by day

The shape borrows the rule from our copyable itinerary examples: one anchor per half-day, and transfer days never carry sightseeing. Day 1 is deliberately walkable, and day 4 is departure-protected — the Orsay opens at its door and the afternoon stays empty, because the RER B ride to CDG plus security is not a place to stack a second museum.

Versailles and the Eiffel Tower share day 3 because one rail line does the connecting work: the château sits about ten minutes’ walk from the Versailles Château–Rive Gauche RER C station (Château de Versailles, checked 26 October 2026), and the same line stops at Champ de Mars–Tour Eiffel, five minutes’ walk from the tower’s entrance (Eiffel Tower, checked 29 October 2026).

What to book before you fly

Three slots make or break this plan:

1. The Louvre time slot. Reservations are required for all visitors, including free-admission ones, and the museum closes Tuesdays (Louvre, checked 29 October 2026). During announced high-attendance windows the slot matters even more — the museum listed 17 October to 1 November 2026 when we checked on 26 October 2026. Last entry is one hour before closing.
2. The Versailles Passport. Only the Passport includes the Palace, and only the Palace uses a timed entry — entry within half an hour of the booked slot is only guaranteed for tickets bought online (Château de Versailles, checked 29 October 2026). Note the estate closes Mondays and the tickets are non-refundable, which makes the slot a commitment, not a preference.
3. The Eiffel Tower time. Summit tickets by lift cost €36.70 and the stairs-then-lift option €28.00 (Eiffel Tower official site, checked 29 October 2026). Two agency-relevant rules sit on this page: from 29 September 2026, groups larger than nine including the guide must book online rather than at the ticket office, and new 2027 fares apply from 11 January 2027 — a client trip after that date prices differently.

Pass or single tickets: the math on this plan

Single tickets on this plan cost less than the only pass that fits. The arithmetic, computed from the day plan above:

The pass breaks even only around twenty metro or RER rides across the four days — about five a day — while this plan rides about six. The €29.60 difference is the price of buying a 5-day pass for a 4-day trip because no 4-day pass exists. The boundary: a five-day stay, a Disneyland or Fontainebleau day, or a riding-heavy plan flips the math toward the pass, which covers all zones including airports and Versailles. Tickets checked at Île-de-France Mobilités on 29 October 2026.

Attractions are separate: the Louvre, Versailles Passport, Orsay and Eiffel summit come to €119.70 per adult, and no transit pass touches that number.

Taking clients to Paris

The plan above is the client-facing half. The agency half is delivery: the bookings change, the slots get confirmed weeks apart, and the client needs the plan on their phone in the museum line, not in an email thread. That is the job we built Viaondo for — import the flight, hotel and train confirmations into a day-by-day itinerary, check the arrival time against the RER B timetable before you promise an evening walk, and deliver it on the traveler app so the plan works offline under your agency’s brand. Pricing is flat per agency, and the 14-day free trial is the whole pitch.

(Full disclosure: we make Viaondo, so read the itinerary craft above as craft and judge the tool on the trial. The blank version of this format is the free itinerary template.)