Galeries Lafayette & Printemps: The Insider’s Department Store Guide

Two grands magasins stare at each other across Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th, Galeries Lafayette at number 40 and Printemps at number 64, and between them they hold the heaviest concentration of luxury, mid-market, and beauty retail in continental Europe. Add Le Bon Marché on the Left Bank (the world’s first department store, opened 1838) and Le BHV Marais beside the Hôtel de Ville (the city’s home-and-hardware temple), and you have the full Paris department store map. This galeries lafayette and printemps shopping guide walks each store floor by floor: the signature brands, the rooftop access, the runway schedule, the gourmet halls, the restaurants, the tax-refund mechanics, and the insider tips that turn a tourist visit into a proper shopping afternoon.

Read it alongside our best shopping streets guide, the tax-free shopping walkthrough, our Paris luxury shopping overview, the souvenirs guide, and our best Paris views piece to fold the department-store afternoon into a wider plan.

The Four Paris Department Stores at a Glance

Before the floor-by-floor breakdowns, the headline differences are what actually decide where you go. Galeries Lafayette is the largest and the most luxury-dense, with the famous 1912 Belle Époque glass cupola and a free rooftop terrace that frames the Opéra Garnier dome and the Eiffel Tower. Printemps is older (1865) and split across three connected buildings for women, men, and beauty-plus-home, with its own Art Nouveau dome and a seventh-floor brasserie called Perruche. Le Bon Marché is the smaller, calmer, more curated Left Bank original, home to the city’s most ambitious food hall in La Grande Épicerie. Le BHV Marais is the only one of the four with a serious hardware and DIY basement, sitting under seven floors of fashion, home, and stationery.

• Galeries Lafayette Haussmann — 40 boulevard Haussmann, 9th, métro Chaussée d’Antin–La Fayette, 70,000 sq m, 8 floors, opened 1894, free rooftop, Friday 3pm runway show.
• Printemps Haussmann — 64 boulevard Haussmann, 9th, métro Havre-Caumartin, three buildings (Femme, Homme, Beauté-Maison), opened 1865, seventh-floor Perruche brasserie, free Déli-Cieux rooftop terrace.
• Le Bon Marché — 24 rue de Sèvres, 7th, métro Sèvres-Babylone, the world’s first department store (1838), curated luxury, La Grande Épicerie food hall across the street.
• Le BHV Marais — 52 rue de Rivoli, 4th, métro Hôtel de Ville, six fashion floors plus the basement hardware and DIY institution.

Galeries Lafayette Haussmann: The Belle Époque Flagship

The Galeries Lafayette Coupole, the painted glass-and-steel dome crowning the main building, is one of the most photographed interiors in Paris. Architect Ferdinand Chanut designed it, and it was finished in 1912, in the wave of Belle Époque retail spectacle that defined the era. The dome rises 43 metres above the ground floor in a neo-Byzantine palette of gold, indigo, and emerald, visible from any of the seven balconied galleries that ring it. The store opened in 1894 as a haberdashery on the corner of rue Lafayette and rue de la Chaussée d’Antin and grew over the next two decades into the 70,000-square-metre flagship that anchors the boulevard today.

Come in from the Boulevard Haussmann entrance opposite the Opéra Garnier, look straight up before anything else, then get your bearings. Cosmetics and fragrance occupy the ground floor beneath the dome, the first-floor luxury salons handle the “hard luxury” maisons (Hermes, Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton), and the upper floors climb through mid-market fashion, lingerie, kids, and the eighth-floor Le Comptoir du Lafayette restaurant level. The rooftop is a free public terrace, reached from the seventh floor via signage and dedicated lifts.

Floor-by-floor: Galeries Lafayette Coupole

• Lower ground (-1) — Le Lafayette Gourmet food hall (after the 2019 reshuffle), with caviar bar, oyster bar, charcuterie, wine, chocolate (Pierre Hermé, Patrick Roger), Maison du Chocolat, Marie-Antoinette macaron counter, and Champagne tasting bar.
• Ground floor (0) — the cosmetics and fragrance temple under the cupola: Chanel Beauté, Dior Beauty, Tom Ford, Guerlain, Armani, plus the Acqua di Parma counter and the Maison Francis Kurkdjian outpost. The single highest-margin square metres in French retail.
• First floor (1) — hard luxury accessories: Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Prada, Fendi, Celine, Loewe, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Valentino, Burberry, Tiffany & Co., Cartier, Bulgari. The Hermes booth on this floor takes the longest queues in the building.
• Second floor (2) — designer women’s ready-to-wear: Isabel Marant, Maje, Sandro, The Kooples, Iro, Zadig & Voltaire, Acne Studios, Stella McCartney, plus the Galeries Lafayette in-house labels.
• Third floor (3) — mid-market women: Maje and Sandro again at lower price points, Massimo Dutti, Ba&sh, Comptoir des Cotonniers, Claudie Pierlot, plus the contemporary denim wall (Levi’s, AG, Frame).
• Fourth floor (4) — lingerie, swim, hosiery, and the dedicated Eres, Aubade, and Princesse Tam-Tam counters; the runway-show seats are set up here Fridays at 3pm.
• Fifth floor (5) — children and baby, plus the Petit Bateau, Bonpoint, and Jacadi corners and the Galeries Lafayette toy department.
• Sixth floor (6) — menswear: Hugo Boss, Polo Ralph Lauren, Lacoste, Brooks Brothers, Sandro Homme, Officine Générale, A.P.C., plus the “Le Concept Store” rotating menswear collaborations.
• Seventh floor (7) — restaurants, brasseries, snacks, and the rooftop terrace access (signage points to the “Toit” lifts).
• Eighth floor (8) — Le Comptoir du Lafayette restaurant, Champagne and oyster bar with cupola views, plus the tax-refund desk in the dedicated tourist services lounge.

The free rooftop terrace

The Galeries Lafayette rooftop is the most underused free panoramic view in the city. Take the dedicated “Toit” lift from the seventh floor (it’s signposted in English) and step out onto an open paved deck, the Opéra Garnier roof three hundred metres south, the full Eiffel Tower in your line of sight to the west. The terrace is open during store hours (10am to 8pm Monday through Saturday, plus 11am to 8pm Sunday) at no charge. A small bar pours Champagne by the glass at around fifteen euros and does a Croque-Monsieur for twelve. The late-afternoon crowd thins as the dinner set drifts off, so come at six-thirty in summer or four in winter for the best light.

The Friday fashion runway show

Every Friday at 3pm in high season (and most Fridays year-round, with announced exceptions), Galeries Lafayette runs a free in-house runway show on a custom catwalk on the fourth floor. It lasts thirty minutes, features pieces from the second and third-floor designer floors, and books out forty-eight hours ahead through the Galeries Lafayette website (search “défilé mode” on the store events page). Same-day standby seats open from 2:30pm in person at the ground-floor welcome desk, so arrive at 2pm on a peak Friday to land one. The show is free; the Champagne and petits fours afterward run five to twelve euros depending on what you choose.

Services for tourists

Galeries Lafayette runs a multilingual welcome desk on the ground floor, opposite the cosmetics escalators. It handles four services tourists genuinely use: a free coat check, a free pram and stroller park, the tax-refund desk (signage points to the sixth floor, see the tax section below), and personal shopper bookings. The personal shopper service is free on purchases above three thousand euros and runs by appointment, with staff who speak English, Mandarin, Arabic, Japanese, and Russian. Book forty-eight hours ahead through the welcome desk or the store website.

Printemps Haussmann: Three Buildings, One Address

Printemps opened in 1865 under founder Jules Jaluzot, which makes it the older of the two Boulevard Haussmann grands magasins by twenty-nine years. The current layout spreads across three connected buildings at 64 boulevard Haussmann, each given over to a category: Printemps Femme (women, the flagship building), Printemps Homme (men, the central building), and Printemps Beauté & Maison (beauty, home, kids, the building closest to rue de Caumartin). Interior bridges link all three on several floors, so you never have to step outside to cross between them, but each has its own street entrance and orients toward Havre-Caumartin (lines 3 and 9) rather than Chaussée d’Antin.

The Printemps Femme dome, the Coupole, is the second great Boulevard Haussmann ceiling to crane your neck at after Galeries Lafayette. Brieuse and Cochet designed it in 1923, with Art Nouveau stained glass by Brière. It was dismantled during World War II to protect it from bombing, stored in southwestern France, and reinstalled in 1973. Today it crowns the brasserie Le Déli-Cieux on the upper level, one floor below the famous outdoor terrace.

Printemps Femme floor-by-floor

• Ground (0) — cosmetics, fragrance, fine jewellery (Cartier, Boucheron, Chaumet, Messika), plus the iconic Printemps fragrance hall lit by the original 1923 chandeliers.
• First (1) — designer ready-to-wear and accessories: Saint Laurent, Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Chloé, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Lanvin, Off-White, Jacquemus.
• Second (2) — contemporary women’s designer floor: Maje, Sandro, Ba&sh, Isabel Marant Étoile, Iro, Zadig & Voltaire, Vanessa Bruno, Self-Portrait.
• Third (3) — mid-market and high-street women: Massimo Dutti, COS, Maje and Sandro outlet pieces, Reiss, Whistles, Ted Baker.
• Fourth (4) — shoes, the largest shoe floor in the city: Christian Louboutin salon, Roger Vivier salon, Aquazzura, Manolo Blahnik, plus mid-market mainline brands and the Printemps Personal Stylist lounge.
• Fifth (5) — lingerie and swimwear, with Eres, La Perla, Aubade, Chantelle, Princesse Tam-Tam.
• Sixth (6) — Printemps du Voyage (luggage, travel) and the dedicated Goyard, Rimowa, Tumi, and Globe-Trotter counters.
• Seventh (7) — brasserie Perruche, the rooftop bar and seafood-focused brasserie that runs cocktail service from 5pm with terrace seating and full Eiffel view, plus Le Déli-Cieux self-service buffet under the original 1923 dome.
• Eighth (8) — free open-air terrace, accessed from the seventh-floor restaurants, with views over the Opéra Garnier rooftop and the Sacré-Coeur silhouette on the hill.

Printemps Homme floor-by-floor

• Ground (0) — men’s accessories (ties, belts, wallets) and the menswear fragrance counters: Tom Ford, Creed, Le Labo, Hermes Parfums, Frederic Malle.
• First (1) — men’s designer: Saint Laurent, Gucci, Prada, Tom Ford, Berluti, Brioni, plus the in-house watch and fine jewellery for men salon.
• Second (2) — men’s contemporary: Polo Ralph Lauren, Hugo Boss, Brooks Brothers, Brunello Cucinelli, Officine Générale, A.P.C., Sandro Homme, The Kooples.
• Third (3) — men’s suiting, formalwear, and the Printemps tailor-made-to-measure (MTM) program plus the Italian shoe wall (Santoni, Berluti, Edward Green, John Lobb).
• Fourth (4) — men’s casual, denim, and outerwear (Canada Goose, Moncler, Stone Island, Carhartt WIP, Patagonia).
• Fifth (5) — sports and athleisure: Nike, Adidas, On Running, Salomon, plus the Printemps sneaker boutique.
• Sixth (6) — menswear vintage and limited editions, the Printemps Homme tax-refund desk, and the Cigar Lounge by Davidoff.

Printemps Beauté & Maison floor-by-floor

• Ground (0) — the world’s largest beauty floor by category: 200+ brands across cosmetics, skincare, fragrance, hair, and nails. The Beauty Pharmacie corner stocks Avene, La Roche-Posay, Caudalie, Embryolisse.
• First (1) — kids and baby (Petit Bateau, Bonpoint, Tartine et Chocolat, Jacadi).
• Second (2) — home dining (Riedel, Baccarat, Christofle, Lalique, Bernardaud, plus the Le Creuset and Staub counters).
• Third (3) — bed and bath linens (Yves Delorme, Frette, Garnier-Thiebaut, plus the candle wall with Diptyque, Cire Trudon, and Astier de Villatte).
• Fourth (4) — furniture and decor (Roche-Bobois corner, Maison Sarah Lavoine, Ligne Roset).
• Fifth (5) — the Printemps gourmet food hall (smaller than Galeries Lafayette’s, but stocked with Bordier butter, Comte cheese, Maison Plisson cured meats, and the in-house wine cave).

Restaurants and brasseries inside Printemps

Perruche is the most ambitious in-store restaurant in Paris, a glass-roofed brasserie on the seventh floor of Printemps Femme with a wraparound terrace, an Eiffel Tower view, a seafood-led menu (oysters at four euros each, lobster roll at thirty-eight, sea bass at thirty-six), and cocktail service from 5pm. Reserve through the Printemps website seven to ten days ahead for a weekend dinner; weekday lunches take walk-ins from 12:30pm. Le Déli-Cieux on the same floor is the self-service buffet sibling under the dome, salads, hot plates, and patisserie at fifteen to twenty-five euros, with the same view for half the price. The open-air rooftop one floor up serves drinks and small plates and stays free to access without a restaurant booking.

Le Bon Marché: The Original, Left Bank

Le Bon Marché on rue de Sèvres in the 7th is the oldest continuously operating department store in the world. Aristide Boucicaut opened it in 1838 as a small notions shop and by 1852 had expanded it into the first “magasin de nouveautés,” a department store with fixed prices, free entry, exchanges, and home delivery. The Eiffel atelier (yes, that Eiffel) engineered the iron-frame interior galleries in the 1869 expansion, and they still stand. LVMH has owned it since 1984 and now treats it as the group’s most curated showcase, smaller and quieter than the Boulevard Haussmann pair, with a deliberately edited selection that leans toward emerging designers and the LVMH houses.

The setup is two buildings. The main Le Bon Marché building at 24 rue de Sèvres holds fashion, beauty, kids, home, and the restaurants; La Grande Épicerie de Paris across the street at 38 rue de Sèvres holds the city’s most ambitious gourmet food hall, three floors and three thousand square metres of artisan produce, wine, cheese, charcuterie, and prepared foods. Crossing between the two is a short walk across the rue de Sèvres footpath.

Le Bon Marché main building

• Lower ground — shoes, jeans, denim, and the rotating “Le Studio” designer pop-ups (Jacquemus, Lemaire, The Frankie Shop, Khaite have all anchored quarters here).
• Ground (0) — cosmetics, fragrance, fine jewellery, plus the rotating “Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche” window installations changed quarterly with a contemporary artist commission.
• First (1) — designer women’s ready-to-wear: Saint Laurent, Celine, Dior, Loewe, Bottega Veneta, plus emerging-designer rotation in “Le Beau” corner.
• Second (2) — contemporary women (Isabel Marant, Maje, Sandro, Acne Studios, A.P.C., Lemaire, Toteme, The Row), and the lingerie salon.
• Third (3) — men’s designer and contemporary (Loro Piana, Brunello Cucinelli, Officine Générale, A.P.C., Lemaire Homme), plus the Italian shoe wall and the men’s tailoring service.
• Fourth (4) — home decor, candles, books, art editions, plus the Le Bon Marché Librairie (one of the best stocked design and art bookshops on the Left Bank).
• Fifth (5) — the rooftop terrace cafe and the in-store restaurant La Table du Bon Marché.

La Grande Épicerie de Paris

La Grande Épicerie is the food-hall half, across the street from the main building, and the only Paris department store food hall that seriously rivals Galeries Lafayette’s. Three floors. The ground floor handles fresh produce, the butcher counter, the fishmonger, an oyster bar, charcuterie, a fromagerie (300+ cheeses), patisserie (Pierre Hermé, Sadaharu Aoki, Yann Couvreur), the bakery (Poilâne sourdough, Du Pain et des Idées by the loaf), and the prepared-foods deli. The lower ground floor holds a wine cave with 6,000 references, including a serious Bordeaux first-growth and Burgundy grand cru section, plus spirits and Champagne. The first floor handles dry goods, chocolate, tea, coffee, condiments, and the imported aisles. Stop at the oyster bar (eighteen euros for a half dozen Gillardeau no. 3) or the in-house brasserie La Cuisine de Bar for a tartine lunch.

Le BHV Marais: Fashion Upstairs, Hardware Downstairs

Le Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville, rebranded as Le BHV Marais in 2013, sits at 52 rue de Rivoli directly across from the Hôtel de Ville in the 4th. The building dates to 1856, and the Galeries Lafayette group owns it now. BHV is the oddest of the four Paris department stores, and the most worth visiting if you live in the city rather than tour it. The basement is a genuine hardware and DIY institution, where Parisian renovators, set designers, and craft professionals shop for tools, paint, screws, electrical components, and plumbing fittings alongside tourists picking up an Étienne du Souch doorknob as a souvenir.

Le BHV Marais floor-by-floor

• Lower ground (-1) — the hardware and DIY temple: 110,000 references across tools, paint, electrical, plumbing, hardware, garden, locksmith, key-cutting, and the famous lightbulb wall.
• Ground (0) — cosmetics, fragrance, fine watches, leather goods, plus the BHV concept-store rotating exhibitions.
• First (1) — men’s contemporary fashion (Polo Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Lacoste, A.P.C., Sandro Homme).
• Second (2) — women’s contemporary (Maje, Sandro, Ba&sh, Comptoir des Cotonniers, Whistles, Reiss).
• Third (3) — lingerie, swimwear, hosiery.
• Fourth (4) — kids and baby plus the dedicated toy department (BHV’s Christmas toy floor is a Paris institution).
• Fifth (5) — home: kitchen, table, bed, bath, plus the Le Creuset and Mauviel cookware floor.
• Sixth (6) — stationery, art supplies (BHV is the Paris reference for art and craft supplies after Sennelier), plus the rooftop bar Le Perchoir Marais (independent operator).

Le Perchoir Marais on the BHV rooftop is the after-shopping bar. Pay six euros to get in on busy nights, take the dedicated lift from the rue de la Verrerie side entrance, and drink a fifteen-euro cocktail under a two-hundred-degree panorama that takes in Notre-Dame across the river, the Hôtel de Ville directly below, and Tour Saint-Jacques to the west. Open Tuesday through Sunday, 4pm to midnight, until 2am Friday and Saturday.

Tax-Free Shopping: How the VAT Refund Works

Non-European Union residents staying in France for under six months qualify for a VAT refund of roughly twelve percent on purchases above one hundred euros total in a single store on a single day (the threshold dropped from one hundred seventy-five euros in 2021). French VAT is twenty percent on paper, but after handling fees the actual cash refund works out to about twelve percent. All four department stores run dedicated tax-refund services, with two variations worth knowing:

• Galeries Lafayette — tax refund desk on the sixth floor, open store hours. Bring purchases, receipts, and your passport. The desk generates a Pablo-system barcode that you scan at airport customs on departure (Pablo kiosks at CDG terminals 1, 2A, 2C, 2E, 2F, and Orly). Refund credited to your card within ten to thirty days. The store also offers an instant Premier Tax Free refund at the desk if you leave a credit card guarantee.
• Printemps — tax refund desk on the sixth floor of Printemps Homme, also Pablo-system. Identical mechanics. Printemps additionally offers a free tourist loyalty card (the Printemps Welcome Card) that adds ten percent off on the day of purchase across most departments stacked on top of the tax refund — a meaningful double discount.
• Le Bon Marché — tax refund desk on the ground floor near the rue de Sèvres entrance. Same Pablo system.
• Le BHV Marais — tax refund desk on the ground floor inside the main rue de Rivoli entrance, open store hours.

Five rules trip people up: you need a minimum one hundred euros in a single store on a single day (you can combine across departments within one store, but not across separate stores); the goods must leave the EU within three months; you have to scan the barcode at a Pablo kiosk at your final EU departure airport; you need your passport at both the refund desk and the airport kiosk; and luxury items (Hermes, Chanel, Louis Vuitton) sometimes need an extra in-store customs declaration. Our full tax-free shopping walkthrough covers the airport-side process.

Insider Tips Most Tourists Miss

Both Boulevard Haussmann stores run dedicated services for international visitors that reach well beyond the public floors. The Galeries Lafayette “Welcome Card” (also called the Galeries Lafayette Tourist Card) is free, takes thirty seconds to get at the ground-floor welcome desk on presentation of a passport, and adds ten percent off in most departments outside the locked-luxury salons (Hermes, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, and Tiffany are excluded). The Printemps Welcome Card is the matching equivalent and stacks the same ten percent; pick it up at the Printemps welcome desk inside the main entrance.

• Free coat check and stroller park — at both stores, ground floor near the welcome desk. Drop a coat or pram and shop unencumbered.
• Free wi-fi — throughout both stores, password printed at the welcome desk.
• Alterations service — both stores do in-house alterations from the fitting rooms on the women’s ready-to-wear floors. Same-day for simple hems on weekdays; two to five days for tailoring. Free on luxury purchases above a threshold (varies by store, typically one thousand euros at Galeries Lafayette and eight hundred at Printemps).
• International shipping — both stores ship purchases home through DHL, FedEx, and UPS partnerships. The shipping desk sits on the same floor as tax refund. Bulky items (luggage, home decor) ship at competitive rates and dodge airline checked-bag fees.
• Personal shopper — free above the spend threshold (around three thousand euros at Galeries Lafayette, two thousand at Printemps), by booking. Multilingual stylists with appointment slots from two hours up; the service includes a private fitting room, Champagne, and the run-of-store buying list.
• VIP lounges — Galeries Lafayette runs the “Privilège” lounge on the eighth floor with espresso, water, charging ports, and the tax-refund concierge. Printemps runs the equivalent “Privilèges” lounge on the sixth floor of Printemps Femme. Both are free with the welcome card or above-threshold purchases.
• The dome at quieter hours — the Galeries Lafayette cupola crowd peaks 11am to 2pm and 4pm to 6pm. For dome photos without heads in the frame, come at the 10am opening or after 7pm in summer.
• Galeries Lafayette Le Gourmet wine bar — lower ground floor, easy to miss. Five-euro Champagne by the glass at the counter while you wait out the tax-refund processing.

Where to Eat Inside the Stores

Lunch inside the store matters more than the restaurants outside it, simply because leaving and coming back through security and the welcome routine adds thirty minutes most shopping afternoons can’t spare. Each of the four carries serious in-house restaurants worth planning around.

• Galeries Lafayette Le Comptoir du Lafayette (8th floor) — Champagne and seafood bar with full cupola views from balcony tables. Oysters six euros each, plats du jour twenty-two to twenty-eight.
• Galeries Lafayette Le Lafayette Gourmet (lower ground) — food-hall counter dining: oyster bar, sushi bar (Maison Mai), pizza counter (Bigino), Lebanese (Liza), Italian (Pasta Linea), Indian (Desi).
• Printemps Perruche (7th floor of Femme) — flagship destination brasserie. Reserve five to ten days ahead for weekend dinner; lunch walk-ins from 12:30pm on weekdays. Twenty-eight to forty-five euros per plate.
• Printemps Le Déli-Cieux (7th floor) — self-service buffet under the original 1923 dome. Salads, hot plates, patisserie at fifteen to twenty-five euros. The cheapest serious view-lunch in Paris.
• Le Bon Marché La Table du Bon Marché (5th floor) — refined bistro with rooftop access. Set lunch twenty-eight euros, dinner mains thirty to thirty-eight.
• La Grande Épicerie La Cuisine de Bar (across the street) — tartine bar built around Poilâne bread, fifteen to twenty euros for a generous lunch plate.
• BHV Marais ground-floor cafes plus Le Perchoir rooftop (6th) — cafes for daytime, Perchoir cocktails for evening.

Which Store for Which Shopping Trip

The four stores genuinely differ in who they serve, and matching the right one to the right mission turns a three-store afternoon into a focused two-hour visit.

• First-time tourist who wants the iconic Paris department-store experience — Galeries Lafayette. The cupola, the rooftop, the Friday runway, and the densest luxury concentration are all here.
• Serious shopper who wants more space and fewer people — Printemps. Same luxury concentration, less queue at the Louis Vuitton counter, the better in-store restaurant (Perruche), and the better rooftop seating.
• Curated, slow, Left Bank, food-focused — Le Bon Marché plus La Grande Épicerie. The surrounding 7th (rue du Cherche-Midi, rue de Grenelle) pairs naturally with the visit.
• Home, hardware, art supplies, or a souvenir lightbulb — Le BHV Marais. The basement is the cheapest meaningful shopping in central Paris.
• Beauty and fragrance haul — Printemps Beauté & Maison ground floor. The widest selection on any single floor in the city.
• Designer handbags — Galeries Lafayette first floor (highest hard-luxury concentration), or Le Bon Marché first floor (less queue, often better stock for emerging brands).
• Sneakers and athleisure — Printemps Homme fifth floor.
• Children — BHV fourth floor (toys), Galeries Lafayette fifth floor (clothes and toys).
• Wedding registry or home gifts — Printemps Beauté & Maison second and third floors, or BHV fifth floor.

Opening Hours and Seasonal Notes

All four keep similar baseline hours: Monday through Saturday roughly 10am to 8pm, Sunday 11am to 8pm. The Boulevard Haussmann pair stretches to 8:30pm or 9pm on Thursday nights and opens earlier through the December holidays (9:30am from late November). The French sales periods, the “soldes d’hiver” (winter sales) running from the second Wednesday of January for four weeks, and the “soldes d’été” (summer sales) from the last Wednesday of June for four weeks, set off discounts of thirty to seventy percent across most departments, the hard-luxury salons excepted.

The Christmas windows on Boulevard Haussmann are their own Paris institution. Galeries Lafayette and Printemps both unveil mechanical-toy and tableau displays in mid-November, and crowds queue on the sidewalk well into January. The Galeries Lafayette in-store Christmas tree, hung under the cupola, climbs twenty metres and changes design every year, and the early-November unveiling pulls in the fashion press. Skip noon to 6pm in the two weeks before Christmas if you actually want to shop rather than stand in line. The rooftop empties then, because the cold pushes everyone indoors.

Routing the Boulevard Haussmann Double-Header

Galeries Lafayette and Printemps stand two hundred metres apart on the same side of the same boulevard, and most serious shopping afternoons hit both. Here’s the routing that works best: get off at Chaussée d’Antin–La Fayette at 10am, enter Galeries Lafayette through the cosmetics doors, look up at the cupola, ride straight to the rooftop while it’s still empty, then work back down through the luxury and designer floors and exit toward Printemps along the boulevard by noon. Lunch at Perruche on the seventh floor of Printemps Femme at 12:30pm. The afternoon descends through Printemps Femme, Homme, and Beauté-Maison in that order, finishing at the tax-refund desk on the sixth floor of Homme by 5pm. Out through Havre-Caumartin métro by 6pm.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Galeries Lafayette cupola free to visit?

Yes. The cupola is fully visible from the ground floor of the main building, free, and open during all store hours (10am to 8pm Monday through Saturday, 11am to 8pm Sunday). There’s no ticket; you walk in through any boulevard entrance and look up. The free rooftop terrace on the seventh floor is also no-charge.

Do I need to book the Friday fashion show in advance?

Yes. The 3pm Friday show at Galeries Lafayette books on the store website forty-eight hours ahead, and seats fill fast in peak season (June through August, December). Same-day standby seats are released from 2:30pm at the ground-floor welcome desk, so arrive by 2pm for a shot at one. The show is free and runs about thirty minutes.

What is the minimum spend for tax-free shopping?

One hundred euros total in a single store on a single day, since the threshold was lowered in 2021 (it used to be 175 euros). Combine purchases across departments within one store to reach the minimum; you can’t combine across two different stores. The refund is about twelve percent of the purchase price after handling fees, against a headline French VAT rate of twenty percent. Process the Pablo barcode at the airport when you leave the EU.

Which store has the better rooftop view?

They show you different things. Galeries Lafayette’s rooftop frames the Opéra Garnier dome more closely and gives a clean line of sight to the Eiffel Tower in the southwest. Printemps’s rooftop is one floor higher and adds the Sacré-Coeur silhouette to the north, with the Eiffel still visible to the southwest. Galeries Lafayette’s terrace is paved and open with a small bar; Printemps’s adjoins the Perruche brasserie and feels more like a rooftop bar. Most people pick Galeries Lafayette for the photo and Printemps for the drink.

Can I get the Welcome Card discount on luxury brands?

No. The ten-percent Welcome Card (Galeries Lafayette) and the Printemps Welcome Card both exclude the hard-luxury maisons: Hermes, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Dior, Cartier, Tiffany, Van Cleef, Bulgari, Rolex, and most fine-watch brands. The discount does work on designer ready-to-wear (Saint Laurent, Gucci, Prada, Balenciaga), cosmetics, fragrance, contemporary fashion (Maje, Sandro), shoes, lingerie, kids, home, and luggage. Tax refund stacks on top.

Is Le Bon Marché worth the trip if I am already on the Right Bank?

For pure fashion shopping, no. Galeries Lafayette and Printemps cover everything Le Bon Marché covers, with a wider selection. For the food hall (La Grande Épicerie), yes; the selection beats anything on the Right Bank, and the forty-minute crossing earns its keep. For atmosphere and crowd density, also yes. Le Bon Marché is meaningfully calmer, so if the Boulevard Haussmann crush gets to be too much, the Left Bank store is the refuge.

What is the best day and time to visit Galeries Lafayette?

Tuesday or Wednesday between 10am and noon. The store opens at 10am, crowds peak between 11:30 and 6pm, and the rooftop is at its emptiest in that first hour. Avoid Saturday afternoons year-round and the two weeks before Christmas at any hour. Sunday opens at 11am and runs slightly quieter than Saturday.

Can I ship purchases home directly from the store?

Yes. All four stores ship internationally through DHL, FedEx, and UPS partnerships, and the shipping desk sits on the same floor as the tax-refund desk in each one. Bulky items (luggage, home decor, cookware) ship at competitive rates and skip the airline checked-bag fees. One note: shipping outside the EU doesn’t change your tax-refund eligibility. You still scan the Pablo barcode at the airport on departure, because the goods are leaving with you, even if they travel separately.

Plan the rest of your trip

Use these to round out your trip:

• the Paris shopping roundup
• Paris Souvenir Guide
• Tax-Free Shopping in Paris
• Vintage & Thrift Shopping in Paris
• the Latin Quarter
• where Parisians buy their food