Zoos Near Paris: The Best Animal Day Trips From the City

If you have a whole day or a weekend, ZooParc de Beauval, 2 hours 15 minutes' drive away, is the only zoo in France with giant pandas.

Which zoo to choose

Travel time decides most of it. Bois d'Attilly is about 30 minutes out by car, so it makes an easy day. Beauval, at 2 hours 15 minutes, is a long day at the very least, and the zoo itself recommends two.

Paris Zoological Park: the zoo inside the city

Featured location Paris Zoological Park Paris, France The purpose is the study of animal behaviour in captivity and the breeding of threatened species for release back in their native ranges. The 65-metre artificial rock drew notice from the start and later entered the park's logo.

Thoiry: the drive-through safari

Thoiry stands in the grounds of the Château de Thoiry, about 40 km west of Paris.

Featured location Château of Thoiry Thoiry, France Château of Thoiry, opened in 1965, is a zoo in Thoiry, France. Animals on show include loups arctiques, tapir, kangourou roux and vari roux.

Bois d'Attilly: the smaller park east of Paris

Bois d'Attilly, at Férolles-Attilly in Seine-et-Marne, puts more than 500 animals of about 100 species on 20 hectares of forest: giraffes, lions, tigers, hippos, chimpanzees, arctic wolves and meerkats among them. It is open all year, parking is free, and its €21 adult ticket undercuts Beauval. Pick it when you want giraffes and hippos without a long drive.

La Serre aux papillons: an hour with butterflies

La Serre aux papillons is a greenhouse in a tropical-jungle setting where hundreds of exotic butterflies fly among the visitors. It sits inside the Jardinerie Poullain garden centre at La Queue-lez-Yvelines, a visit takes 1 hour 15 minutes, and it opens daily from 9:30am to 6pm, with the last start at 5pm. It works as a rainy-day plan or a short outing on its own.

ZooParc de Beauval: the big one

Beauval covers more than 45 hectares with more than 800 species. It takes a full day, and the zoo recommends two to see everything. The ticket includes the bird and sea lion shows, which run from the end of March to mid-November, the Nuage de Beauval cable car and the Equatorial Dome.

Beauval is the only zoo in France to house giant pandas, and it was here, in 2017, that Yuan Meng became the first giant panda cub born in the country. The first pair, Huan Huan and Yuan Zi, spent more than 13 years at Beauval, and the zoo announced that they were due to leave for China by the end of November 2025. Their twins, Huanlili and Yuandudu, born at Beauval in 2021, stay until the end of the cooperation period in January 2027. You can see them outdoors in the Heights of China from 9am, or otherwise through the windows of the panda gallery.

The Equatorial Dome, kept at 26°C all year, houses anacondas, squirrel monkeys, scarlet ibis, giant otters, manatees, golden lion tamarins and Komodo dragons. A new area, Les Terres Rouges, covers more than 4,500 m² of Australian bush with red kangaroos, Parma wallabies, emus and wombats, a species you will not see in any other French zoo.

Featured location ZooParc de Beauval St. Aignan, France WAZAWAZA-WP Roughly 35,000 animals are shown across 45 hectares. The park was created in 1980 by Françoise Delord; her son Rodolphe Delord now heads it and the family holds most of the capital. It is frequently the first park in the country to display particular animals.

Getting there

• Bois d'Attilly: about 30 minutes from Paris on the A4, with free parking on site.
• La Serre aux papillons: 40 minutes by train on line N from Paris Montparnasse towards Dreux; get off at Garancières-La Queue.
• ZooParc de Beauval: 2 hours 15 minutes by car via the A10, A71 and A85, with 4,000 free parking spaces. By train, go to Blois on the Paris Austerlitz line; from March to November a shuttle bus timed to the trains takes an hour to reach the zoo and costs €3.40 one way.

Tickets and saving money

These prices were checked in September 2026.

• ZooParc de Beauval: €43 for adults and €36 for children aged 3-10 at the gate, or €70 and €59 for two days. Dated tickets bought online start at €39 and €32.
• Bois d'Attilly: €21 for adults, €17.50 for ages 12-17 and €14 for ages 3-11; a family ticket for two adults and two children under 11 costs €60.
• La Serre aux papillons: €11 for adults and €8 for children aged 3-14.

Other savings are easy to miss. At Beauval, showing your SNCF train ticket takes €2 off admission. Bois d'Attilly sells a combined ticket with Sea Life at €38 for ages 12 and over and €28 for children aged 2-11.

Best time to visit

Paris is in school-holiday zone C. Expect families at every zoo during the autumn holidays (17 October to 2 November 2026), at Christmas (19 December 2026 to 4 January 2027), and in the zone C winter and spring holidays (6 to 22 February and 3 to 19 April 2027).

At Bois d'Attilly, to avoid the crowds, arrive early, see the park in the morning when the animals are most active, and catch the animal feedings in the early afternoon.

Check the hours before you set off, because they change with the seasons:

• ZooParc de Beauval: opens at 9am, with last entry at 6:30pm, checked September 2026.
• Bois d'Attilly: 10am to 5pm, or until 6pm or 7pm, depending on the period in its colour-coded calendar.

With kids and accessibility

Picnic rules differ. Bois d'Attilly allows picnics in areas near its snack bar. Beauval bans them inside the park but has a covered picnic area at each of its two entrances. Leave the dog at home for Bois d'Attilly: it does not admit pets, even on a lead.

Bois d'Attilly is accessible to visitors with reduced mobility and to pushchairs, and most of Beauval is accessible too, apart from some very steep paths.