Paris Layover Map: Airports, Terminals and Distances
Paris has three airports at three very different distances, and which one you are connecting through decides more about your layover than the length of the gap does.
Three airports, three different problems
Charles de Gaulle is the big one and the far one. Orly is smaller and much closer. Beauvais is neither — it is a regional field the budget carriers call Paris, and it is 85 km away.
| Airport | Distance to central Paris | By road | By rail | Taxi flat fare, right bank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charles de Gaulle (CDG) | About 23 km north-east | 45 min to 1 h 15 | 30–35 min on the RER B | €56 |
| Orly (ORY) | About 14 km south | 25–50 min | About 30 min via Metro 14 or Orlyval | €45 |
| Beauvais (BVA) | About 85 km north | 1 h 15 or more | Coach transfer only, over an hour | Not a flat fare |
Charles de Gaulle: terminals 1, 2A to 2G and 3
The airport opened on 8 March 1974 and handled 72,029,407 passengers in 2025. It has three terminals: Terminal 1, the round one; Terminal 2, which is really seven buildings lettered 2A to 2G; and Terminal 3, which handles charter and low-cost traffic.
The free CDGVAL light-rail shuttle links them. That matters on a layover for one reason: your driver meets you at the terminal your flight lands at, so give the operator your flight number rather than a terminal letter. Aircraft get moved between buildings and the flight number is what the operator tracks.
Orly: closer, smaller, and simpler
Orly sits about 14 km south of the centre, roughly ten kilometres closer than Charles de Gaulle, and its terminals are a single connected building rather than a campus. The flat-fare taxi is €45 to the right bank and €36 to the left.
That proximity is worth about forty minutes of round-trip driving, which on a short connection is the difference between a layover and a wait. Fewer tours collect here, though, so the closer airport has the shorter list.
Beauvais: the one that is not really a Paris airport
Beauvais-Tillé is about 85 km north of Paris and reached by a scheduled coach that takes well over an hour each way. Two and a half hours of transfer eats the usable middle of any connection.
If you are flying through Beauvais and want to see Paris, plan a night in the city rather than a layover tour. None of the departures listed here is built for it, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise.
Getting from the airport to the city, without a tour
From Charles de Gaulle the RER B reaches Gare du Nord in about 30 to 35 minutes, with trains roughly every ten minutes; the direct service skips the intermediate stops and is quicker than the all-stations one. From Orly, Metro line 14 and the Orlyval shuttle both work.
The fare is the Paris Région – Aéroports ticket at €14, valid for 120 minutes across every Paris zone including connections. There is no paper version. Single tickets went digital in 2025, so it loads onto a Navigo Easy card, the Île-de-France Mobilités app or Apple Wallet, and the machines will not sell you a card of paper.
Where the landmarks are, and which of them cluster
Paris is small. The centre is about ten kilometres across and the famous things sit in three clusters, which is why a driving route works at all.
The western cluster: Eiffel Tower, Trocadéro,
Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Élysées, Les Invalides. Fifteen minutes end to
end.
The central cluster: Concorde, the Tuileries, the Louvre, Palais
Garnier, Place Vendôme. Ten minutes end to end.
The island and the left bank: Notre-Dame, Île de la Cité,
the Latin Quarter, Musée d'Orsay. Ten minutes from the Louvre.
The hill: Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur, twenty minutes north
of the centre and the one that is genuinely separate.
Which cluster your airport favours
Coming from Charles de Gaulle you approach from the north-east, so the hill is effectively on the way in and the tower is the far end of the run. Coming from Orly you approach from the south, so the left bank and the tower come first and Montmartre is the detour.
Good routes are built round that geometry. A route that crosses the city twice has spent half your time on the périphérique.
Where a car can stop, and where it cannot
This is the practical difference between a private car and a coach. A car can pull in at the Trocadéro, on the Pont Alexandre III, beside the Louvre pyramid and at the foot of the Montmartre funicular, and wait while you photograph.
It cannot stop on the Champs-Élysées, in front of the Arc de Triomphe or on the Île de la Cité at busy hours. Those you see from the road or on foot from a nearby stop, which is why the good routes park once and walk a block.
The airport, on the map
Name
Aéroport de Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG)
Address
95700 Roissy-en-France, France
Hours
Open 24 hours. Terminals 1, 2A–2G and 3, linked by the free CDGVAL shuttle.
What this means for your booking
Give the operator the flight number, not the terminal. Book the airport you are actually connecting through rather than the one the tour title mentions. And if you are at Orly, check the departure point before you pay — most of these collect at Charles de Gaulle only.
Book the airport you are actually at
Departure points are on every card, so you can see at a glance which tours collect where.
The clock side of the same question is on the timing rules page, and what you can reach once you are in is on things to do on a Paris layover. Paris Layover Tours lists every departure with its airport.