Opening hours and holidays
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Église de la Madeleine

Opening hours

Most shops, businesses, information services, museums and banks in Paris stay open all day. The exceptions are the smaller shops and enterprises, which may close for lunch sometime between 12.30pm and 2pm. Basic hours of business are from 8 or 9am to 6.30 or 7.30pm Monday to Saturday for the big shops and Tuesday to Saturday for smaller shops (some of the smaller shops may open on Monday afternoon). You can always find boulangeries and food shops that do stay open, however, on days when others close – on Sunday normally until noon.

Restaurants, bars and cafés often close on Sunday or Monday. It's common for bars and cafés to stay open to 2am, and even extend hours on a Friday and Saturday night, closing earlier on Sunday. Restaurants won't usually serve after 10pm, though some brasseries cater for night owls and serve meals till the early hours. Most small businesses, including some hotels, take a holiday between the middle of July and the end of August.

Museums open between 9 and 10am and close between 5 and 6pm. Summer times may differ from winter times; if they do, both are indicated in the Listings of the Guide. Summer hours usually extend from mid-May or early June to mid-September, but sometimes they apply only during July and August, occasionally even from Palm Sunday to All Saints' Day. Don't be caught out by museum closing days – usually Monday or Tuesday and sometimes both. Churches and cathedrals are almost always open all day, with charges only for the crypt, treasuries or cloister.

Public holidays

France has thirteen national holidays (jours fériés) when most shops and businesses, though not necessarily museums or restaurants, are closed. May in particular is a big month for holidays, when Ascension Day normally falls, as sometimes does Pentecost, added to May Day and Victory Day. It makes a peaceful time to visit, as people clear out of town over several weekends, but many businesses will have erratic opening hours. Just about everywhere, including museums, is closed on May 1. July 14 heralds the beginning of the French holiday season and people leave town en masse between then and the end of August.

National holiday dates

January 1 New Year's Day

Easter Sunday

Easter Monday

Ascension Day (forty days after Easter)

Pentecost or Whitsun (seventh Sunday after Easter, plus the Monday)

May 1 May Day/Labour Day

May 8 Victory in Europe Day

July 14 Bastille Day

August 15 Assumption of the Virgin Mary

November 1 All Saints' Day

November 11 1918 Armistice Day

December 25 Christmas Day