A few things to fill up your social calendar with this season…

Summer Activities

• Paris Plages (4th July- 30th August) Take a swim at the cities urban beach!
• Open-air Cinema (22nd July- 16th August) For 35 years, every summer, for twenty evenings, the Parc de la Villette transforms into Paris’s largest open-air cinema.

ARTS & CULTURE Events of Note

• Bal d’Epoque at the Hotel de la Marine! Rendez-vous one Friday per month.
• Tour de France finish (26th July) Final stage arrives in Paris, from Thoiry to Paris Champs-Élysées.
• Bastille Day (14th July) France Independence Day: celebrate with the parade, fireworks and cruise parties.
• Paris Jazz Festival (until 6th September) Open-air jazz concerts in the Parc Floral
• Classique au Vert Performing arts festival with theatre, dance, circus and outdoor/venue-based shows around the city.

Season-long Museum Exhibitions

• Bibliothèque Nationale de France
  • Cartes imaginaires (imaginary maps) A playful, imaginative exhibition about how maps shape not just real geography, but fantasy, memory, and invented worlds. It explores the border between reality and fiction, showing how cartography can also be a tool for dreaming. (until 19th July)
• Bourse de Commerce
  • Clair-obscur is a moody group show about light, shadow, and everything that slips between the visible and invisible. Turning chiaroscuro into both a visual atmosphere and a way of thinking about the unconscious. (until 24th August)
  • Fujiko Nakaya From June 4th, the Rotunda is taken over by the Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya and one of her “Fog Sculptures”, entitled “Cloud #07156”.
• Château de Versailles
  • An exhibition about the 1725 visit of Native American allies to the court of Louis XV, seen as a real diplomatic encounter rather than a colonial curiosity. It revisits the relationship between France and Indigenous nations of the Mississippi Valley through objects, portraits, and contemporary perspectives that challenge older narratives.
• Cinematheque
  • The Marilyn Monroe exhibition revisits her not just as a sex symbol, but as a serious actress shaped by and pushing against the Hollywood studio system. Marking the 100th anniversary of her birth, it traces her rise from 1946 to 1962 through costumes, film clips, photographs, and rare documents. (until 26th July)
• Grand Palais
  • Laure Prouvost: We, star-studded shivers. Under the glass roof of the Grand Palais, the artist presents a monumental work blending video, sculpture, sound, scent, and light, the result of two years of research into quantum physics. (until 26th July)
• Musee de Luxeumbourg
  • Leonora Carrington; A surreal, dreamlike show about the artists world of myth, metamorphosis, and symbolism. (18th February-19th July)
• Musee des Arts Decoratif
  • A day in the 18th ^century , chronicle of a private mansion (18th February – 5th July)
• Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
  • Lee Miller (18th April – 2nd August)
• Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature
  • One swallow does not make a summer.– Annette Messager, More than 80 works are displayed in about fifteen rooms, along a thematic route ( amorous transports , capture and captivity , blood of beasts , domesticated savagery…) where major installations, emblematic works and unpublished pieces engage in dialogue with the museum’s collections.
• Musée de la Vie Romantique
  • Face au ciel, Paul Huet en son temps: A poetic show about Paul Huet’s fascination with the sky, light, and atmosphere. It presents him as a key Romantic landscape painter, in dialogue with other artists of his time. (14th February until 30th August)
• Musée de la Poste
  • Sous toutes les coutures – Le vêtement au travail, a lively exhibition about how work clothes reflect power, protection, and identity. Spanning more than two centuries, it turns uniforms and everyday professional dress into a lens on the social history of labor.
• Palais de Tokyo
  • Palais de Tokyo’s current season, “Normes Corps,” brings together exhibitions about bodies, vulnerability, disability, and forms of difference that challenge social norms. The program feels intimate, political, and physically charged. The overall mood is bold and experimental, with a strong focus on care, resilience, and the body as a site of resistance. (until 13th September)