Les Invalides Tickets: Prices, Discounts & How to Book

A Les Invalides ticket is your admission to the Hôtel des Invalides complex, which in practice means the Musée de l'Armée (France's national military history museum), Napoleon's Tomb beneath the golden dome, and a handful of smaller museums tucked inside the same grounds. It's a single ticket covering a sprawling site — not a single room you walk through in twenty minutes. Budget half a day if you want to do it properly, or two to three hours if you're moving efficiently and skipping the deeper military history wings.

Here's the thing people get wrong: they treat Les Invalides like a quick stop between the Eiffel Tower and the Musée Rodin, both of which are a short walk away. It can be that, but it's underselling the place. The tomb itself — Napoleon's red quartzite sarcophagus sitting inside a sunken crypt under the dome — is genuinely one of the more striking funerary monuments in Europe, and the museum's World War I and World War II galleries are more thorough than most visitors expect.

Tickets are sold as timed or open-dated entry depending on the season and current booking system, and the admission is valid for the full complex on the day of visit. You won't need to choose between the tomb and the museum; one ticket gets you into both.

What you get with admission

Standard admission includes the Musée de l'Armée's permanent collections (arms and armor, the two World Wars, and historical army galleries), Napoleon's Tomb under the Dôme des Invalides, the Musée des Plans-Reliefs (a collection of scale models of fortified French towns), and the Musée de l'Ordre de la Libération. That's four distinct collections under one roof-and-courtyard complex, which is unusually generous for a single ticket in central Paris. Temporary exhibitions are sometimes included and sometimes ticketed separately — check the specific exhibition terms when you book, since this varies by show.

What's not included

Audio guides typically cost extra, usually a few euros on top of admission, and are worth it here more than at most museums — the military history galleries have dense context that gets lost without narration. Guided tours in English are a separate add-on and need to be booked ahead, since availability is limited and not every day has one scheduled. The ticket doesn't include transport, and it doesn't include entry to unrelated nearby sights like the Musée Rodin next door, even though the two sit close enough to combine in one afternoon. If you're expecting a combined ticket covering both, you'll be disappointed — you need to book Rodin separately.

The pricing structure at Les Invalides is simpler than the Louvre's but still has enough variation that it's worth reading before you click buy. As of 2024, standard adult admission runs at approximately €15, though you should always confirm the current figure on the official Musée de l'Armée site before booking, since museum pricing in Paris tends to shift annually.

There's no confusing multi-tier system here like you'll find at the Louvre, where temporary exhibitions sometimes carry a premium. At Les Invalides, one adult price generally covers the full permanent collection. Where it gets more interesting is the discount and free-entry structure, which is broader than most visitors assume.

Standard adult tickets

Full-price adult tickets, bought either at the on-site ticket counter or online through the official Musée de l'Armée website, cover same-day entry to the museum, the tomb, and the smaller collections. Online booking typically lets you select a date (and sometimes a time slot during peak season), which matters in July and August when the ticket hall queue can run long. If you're visiting between June and September, book online a few days ahead rather than relying on walk-up purchase — the counter line moves slower than the Louvre's pyramid entrance on a bad day, mostly because fewer staff are allocated to a site that gets less foot traffic than the big three Paris museums.

Discounted and free entry

Reduced-rate tickets are generally available for EU citizens aged 18–25, and free entry is standard for visitors under 18, for job seekers, and for people with disabilities plus one accompanying carer — but eligibility rules and required documentation change, so verify current criteria on the official site before you travel. Active military personnel and veterans often qualify for free or reduced entry too, which fits the site's identity as a military history museum. One frequently overlooked free-entry window: many French national museums, Les Invalides included, offer free admission on the first Sunday of certain months — this isn't guaranteed year-round and has been adjusted in recent years, so don't build your whole itinerary around it without checking first.

Once you've decided you're going, the real question is which channel to book through. There are three realistic paths: the official Musée de l'Armée website, a bundled option through the Paris Museum Pass, or a third-party platform like Ceetiz, Klook, or Expedia. Each has a different trade-off between price, flexibility, and convenience.

Booking direct from the official site is cheapest for a single visit, while the Paris Museum Pass only pays off if you're combining Les Invalides with several other major museums in the same trip.

Les Invalides tickets compared: official site, Museum Pass, and third-party platforms

Prices as of 2024; always confirm current admission and pass pricing on the official Musée de l'Armée and Paris Museum Pass websites before booking.

Official site vs third-party platforms

Buying direct from the official museum site is almost always cheaper, since third-party platforms add a service margin on top of the base admission price. The trade-off is that platforms like Ceetiz or Klook sometimes bundle in extras — a guided tour, an audio guide, or a combined ticket with another nearby sight — that can be worth the markup if you value having everything pre-arranged, especially for a family trip where you don't want to manage separate bookings for guides and audio equipment. Expedia tends to list Les Invalides as part of broader Paris city-pass bundles rather than as a standalone ticket, which only makes sense if you're already using Expedia for the rest of your trip. My honest take: unless you specifically want a guided add-on, book direct. You're paying for convenience you may not need.

Paris Museum Pass vs single ticket

The Paris Museum Pass includes Les Invalides (the Musée de l'Armée and Napoleon's Tomb) alongside the Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, Musée Rodin, and roughly fifty other sites across the region, sold in 2, 4, and 6-day versions. It makes sense if you're visiting four or more paid attractions in that window — do the math on individual admission prices for your planned itinerary before assuming the pass saves money, because for a short trip focused mainly on the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe (neither of which the pass covers, incidentally) it may not pay off. The pass also doesn't let you skip lines at every site, and at Les Invalides specifically, pass holders still generally need to collect or validate entry rather than walk straight in, so build in a buffer.

Booking online is the sensible default for anyone visiting between April and September, a good habit year-round since it locks in your date without a counter queue. The process is quick — most visitors finish in under five minutes — but a few steps trip people up, particularly around date flexibility and refund terms.

Step-by-step booking process

Go to the official Musée de l'Armée website and find the ticketing section. Select your visit date (time slots may or may not apply depending on current booking rules — check whether your date requires one). Choose ticket type: standard adult, reduced rate, or free entry if you qualify, selecting the category carefully since most sites require proof of eligibility on arrival. Add any extras — audio guide, guided tour — at this stage if offered. Complete payment and save the confirmation email or PDF; most visitors show a QR code or barcode at the entrance rather than a printed ticket, though printing a backup copy isn't a bad idea in case your phone battery dies at the gate.

Official channels and trusted sellers

The official Musée de l'Armée site is the only channel that guarantees you're paying base price with no markup, and it's also the most reliable for refund and cancellation terms — official tickets are often refundable or exchangeable up to a certain number of days before the visit date, though exact terms change, so read the cancellation policy at checkout rather than assuming. Third-party sellers (Ceetiz, Klook, Expedia) are legitimate and widely used across Paris attractions, but their cancellation windows and customer service routes run through the platform, not the museum, which matters if something goes wrong close to your visit date. Avoid buying from unofficial resale sites or street vendors near the complex — there's no skip-the-line benefit to gain there, and verifying authenticity afterward is a hassle you don't need.

Not every traveler gets equal value from a Les Invalides ticket, and it's worth being honest about that before you spend the money. The site rewards people with some interest in history and punishes people expecting a quick Instagram stop.

For history and military enthusiasts

This is close to essential. The Musée de l'Armée's collection is one of the largest military history museums in the world, and the WWI and WWII galleries are detailed enough to occupy a dedicated afternoon on their own. If you've already done the Arc de Triomphe and found yourself wanting more context on French military history, this is the natural next stop — arguably more substantial than anything at the Louvre on this specific subject, since the Louvre's focus is art, not military history. Pair the visit with the audio guide; the artifact labeling alone doesn't give you the full picture.

For first-time Paris visitors

If this is your first 48 hours in Paris and you're prioritizing the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Pont Alexandre III for photos, Les Invalides competes for time rather than complementing it. It's a 10–15 minute walk from Pont Alexandre III and close to the Champ de Mars, so it fits geographically into a day that includes the Eiffel Tower — but don't assume you can do all three properly in one afternoon. Families with younger children (under 8 or so) often find the military history content dense and the tomb visit solemn rather than exciting; if your kids are deep into the Eiffel Tower and Champ de Mars picnic mode, it may be a better half-day on a second visit to Paris rather than crammed into day one.