The Paris Opera House with Kids: How Long to Allow, What They'll Like and What It Costs

The Paris Opera House is an unusually good building to bring children to, and an unusually easy one to get wrong by half an hour. It is warm, dry, flat once you are up the staircase, and full of things that look like a film set. It is also long enough to lose a ten-year-old completely. Here is what the numbers say, and Paris Opera House ticket prices are set out with the child rates each one carries.

What it costs for a family

Two adults and two under-13s from outside Europe is €25 twice and nothing else, which makes this one of the better-value interiors in central Paris. Visitor information has the rest of the price list.

How long they will actually last

Ninety minutes. That is not a guess: an operator's own reviewer, travelling with a ten- and a twelve-year-old, writes that two hours was a stretch and that both were flagging after about an hour, and recommends keeping it to ninety minutes with a family. Another reviewer, on a different departure, describes a guide holding children of ten, thirteen and fifteen for a full two hours — so it is doable, and it depends entirely on the guide.

What children actually like here

• The staircase. It is the size of a cathedral and it splits in two. Every child stops.
• The Pythia. A bronze woman covered in snakes, at the bottom, before anything else happens.
• The tablet. The children's route at €6.50 runs an augmented-reality layer over rooms nobody can walk into.
• The Phantom. Not real, and useful anyway. The counterweight that came through the ceiling in 1896 is real, and it is the better story.
• The auditorium, if it is open. Red velvet, gold, and Chagall's ceiling overhead.

What to prepare them for

The cloakrooms are closed, so bring a small bag. Scooters are not allowed in at all. And the auditorium, which is the room with the chandelier in it, may simply be shut on the day — rehearsals close it without notice and no ticket anywhere guarantees it. Say so before you go in rather than after.

Which departure suits a family

A ninety-minute plan that works

Start at ten, when the doors open and the rooms are still empty. Give the bottom four minutes: the rotunda where the carriages came in, and the bronze Pythia with her snakes, which is the first thing here that looks like a story. Then the Grand Staircase, which is where you lose them for twenty minutes and should.

Cross the avant-foyer quickly, because it is low and dark and children read it as a corridor. Give the Grand Foyer twenty minutes, walking its whole length once rather than standing at one end. Then the salons and the Rotonde du Glacier for ten between them, and the Library-Museum only if everybody is still cheerful. That is eighty-five minutes and it ends before anybody asks how much longer.

What to do if the auditorium is shut

It happens, and it is the one thing worth briefing them on in advance. Rehearsals close the room without notice and no ticket sold anywhere guarantees it, so the room with the chandelier and Chagall's ceiling in it may simply not be available. Telling children beforehand turns a disappointment into a coin toss they already knew about.

If it is shut, the tablet's augmented-reality layer is the substitute, and at €6.50 for the children's route it is the cheapest good decision available. The rooms page explains what is behind each door either way.

Getting there with a pushchair

The visitors' entrance is on the corner of Rue Scribe and Rue Auber, and the RER A at Auber comes up on that street. Several of the guided departures describe themselves as stroller accessible and two describe themselves as wheelchair accessible, though the operators disagree with each other on the second, so read the individual listing.

Once inside, the building is stairs. There is a lift, and a reviewer describes a guide using it for somebody in her party who found the staircase difficult, which is a better indication than a tick box. Scooters are not allowed in at all. The map page has the métro exits.

The booking minimum nobody expects

One of the departures here takes a minimum of two adults. If you are one adult travelling with children, that listing will not take the booking, which is a frustrating thing to discover at the payment screen. The other private departures accept a single adult. The private tours page sets out the caps and the minimums together.

What it costs against the alternatives

Two adults and two children under thirteen, from outside Europe, is fifty euro for the family, plus thirteen if you take one adult tablet and one children's route. For a ninety-minute indoor visit in the first arrondissement that is close to the cheapest serious thing you can do with a wet afternoon.

A private guided departure changes the sum entirely: the ninety-minute private tour is a per-person fare and the two-hour one has a two-adult minimum. Whether that is worth it depends less on the children than on whether you want to be the one explaining the building. The private tours page does the arithmetic.

What to do afterwards

The Galeries Lafayette is a few minutes up Boulevard Haussmann and its free roof terrace is a straight swap for a queue at a viewpoint. One departure here finishes there on purpose. The map page has the walk.

Under six, and what to do about it

If your children are under about six, this is a beautiful ninety minutes for you and a long corridor for them, and the self-guided ticket at their free rate is the way to do it: no guide waiting, no fixed pace, leave when it stops working. The visiting post covers the booking, and the FAQ page answers the rest.