Paris CDG Airport to the City Centre by Train

Paris Charles de Gaulle’s RER B suburban train reaches the Gare du Nord station in about 30 minutes on a flat 14-euro ticket, and two stops on the way in are worth the time on their own: the tombs of the French kings at Saint-Denis and Concorde at the Air and Space Museum in Le Bourget.

The suburban train reaches Paris’s Gare du Nord station in 30 minutes

The RER B leaves from the station directly beneath Terminal 2 every 10 to 15 minutes, from around 5am until midnight, reaching Gare du Nord in about 30 minutes and Châtelet-Les-Halles, the big central interchange, about five minutes later; the direct services that skip the suburban stops are noticeably quicker than the all-stations ones. From Terminals 1 and 3, the free CDGVAL shuttle comes first, every four minutes, which puts the door-to-door figure closer to 50 minutes. The fare is a flat 14 euros on the Paris Region to Airports ticket, which only exists on a Navigo Easy card or a phone and covers onward transfers across the region for two hours. A taxi is a flat 56 euros to the Right Bank and 65 to the Left Bank. From Châtelet, the main Paris guide walks to Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle.

The tombs of the French kings at Saint-Denis

The Basilica of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, is the abbey church where most of France’s kings and queens were buried for more than a thousand years; its twelfth-century choir is counted among the first Gothic buildings anywhere. From the airport it’s about an hour: the RER B into Gare du Nord, the RER D suburban line two stops back north to Saint-Denis, then a 15-minute walk or a short tram ride, all on the same airport ticket.

The royal necropolis inside holds carved effigies of kings and queens lying on their tombs, down to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. A Saint-Denis basilica ticket is 17 euros from Tuesday to Sunday and 11 on Mondays, when the spire workshop is shut; it opens at 10am, noon on Sundays, and closes at 4:45pm in winter and 5:45pm from April to September, and during services.

Concorde and a Boeing 747 at the Air and Space Museum

The Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace stands on the airfield at Le Bourget, where Charles Lindbergh landed in 1927, beside the airport’s Art Deco terminal; from CDG it’s about 40 minutes by the RER B to Le Bourget station and bus 152. More than a hundred aircraft are on show, and you can walk through both of the museum’s Concordes, a Boeing 747 and a D-Day Dakota. An Air and Space Museum ticket is 17 euros and includes the boarding; it’s free to those under 26 apart from the aircraft. It’s closed on Mondays and opens from 10am to 5pm in winter and 6pm from April to September.

Left luggage at Charles de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle’s left-luggage office, run by Bagages du Monde, is in the Terminal 2 train station on level 4, opposite the Sheraton at the CDGVAL arrival point, open every day from 7am to 9pm, from about 7 euros a bag. Terminals 1 and 3 have none of their own, so a bag stored there means the CDGVAL shuttle across first, and a luggage storage point near Gare du Nord is the alternative for a stop spent in the city.

Collect the bag on the way back to the platform, and budget the door-to-door figure rather than the ride: about 30 minutes from Gare du Nord to Terminal 2, closer to 50 to Terminals 1 and 3.