PARIS FYI

Staying Safe in Paris

The practical things we tell every visitor before they arrive.

Paris is a big city, and it behaves like one. The overwhelming majority of visitors have a completely uneventful trip, and the ones who run into trouble usually run into the same small set of problems: a bag opened on the metro, a phone lifted off a café table, a practiced scam near a monument.

Almost none of that is violent, and almost all of it is avoidable once you know what it looks like. So rather than tell you which neighborhoods to fear, here is what we actually tell friends before they come.

The one habit that prevents most of it. Carry your bag in front of you, zipped, on a strap across your body, and keep your phone off the table. That single change removes the opportunity nearly every incident on this page depends on.

Street Scams Worth Recognizing

  • The friendship braceletSomeone ties string around your wrist, then demands payment. Common on the steps below Sacré-Cœur.
  • The petitionA clipboard is pushed at you to sign. While you read it, a second person works your bag.
  • The gold ringSomeone picks up a ring at your feet, asks if it is yours, then asks for money for it.
  • The shell gameThree cups on a box, and a crowd of accomplices who are all winning. Nobody outside the game ever wins.
  • The charity clipboardAn unofficial collection for a cause that does not exist. Real charities do not work this way.

Where to Keep Your Guard Up

  • Crowded metro carsEspecially at the moment the doors close.
  • Châtelet-Les HallesThe largest interchange in the city, and busy in every direction.
  • The RER B from the airportTired travelers with luggage are the obvious target.
  • Directly under the major monumentsWhere everyone is looking up and nobody is watching their bag.
  • Café terracesA phone left on the table is the easiest thing in Paris to lose.

Numbers to Have in Your Phone

  • 112European emergency number, works from any phone, English spoken
  • 17Police
  • 15SAMU, medical emergencies
  • 18Fire and rescue, the pompiers
  • 114Emergency by SMS, for deaf and hard of hearing callers

For the district-by-district breakdown, this independent guide covers it thoroughly. It is not ours, and we do not endorse every judgment in it.

Read a travel writer’s neighborhood guide

If something does happen. Report a theft at any commissariat de police and ask for the written record, the déclaration de vol, because your insurance and your embassy will both want it. Cancel cards first, then file. If you lose a passport, contact your embassy directly.

On neighborhoods. We have deliberately not published a list of districts to avoid. Paris is our home and these are our neighbors, and blanket warnings about whole areas tend to say more about who lives there than about what actually happens there. Situational awareness travels better than a map of places to fear. If you would still like the neighborhood-by-neighborhood version, there are travel writers who cover it in detail, and one of the better ones is linked below.

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We are Baron and Jen Carson, missionaries to France since 2018. There is hope for Paris. There is hope for France. There is Hope Now.

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