La Cité Immersive des Fables, off the Champs-Élysées

La Cité Immersive des Fables is a walk-through exhibition built on the fables of Jean de La Fontaine, the 17th-century poet who wrote 243 of them. It is the work of Cités Immersives, opened in September 2025 and is sold on Fever. It fills more than 1,000 square metres of the Galerie Berri Washington at 5 rue de Berri, a covered arcade just off the Champs-Élysées. There are no paintings behind glass: the operator calls it an immersive exhibition rather than a museum, and it is not virtual reality, so nothing goes over your eyes.

Tickets are timed. At the desk you choose French or English audio and are handed a headset that knows where you are, so the sound follows you from room to room. You then walk at your own pace through La Fontaine’s study and rooms given to the Fox, the Wolf, the Frog and the Lion, among real sets, plants, smells and video projected on the walls. The operator counts more than 50 fables. The animals are played on screen by French actors: Laurent Stocker of the Comédie-Française as La Fontaine, Alexandre Astier as the Lion, Arielle Dombasle as the Wolf, Charles Berling as the Fox and Marie S’Infiltre as the Frog. Interactive games sit along the way, and the historian and YouTuber Nota Bene appears on kiosks.

The route ends in the Salle des Rêves, a show the press kit puts at 25 minutes, with video projected on the walls and floor all around you and music directed by Bon Entendeur. Four more fables appear here as short films. A shop and a few drinks and snacks wait at the very end.

Fever says to allow an hour and a half; the operator says 90 minutes to two hours with photos and the shop. It is recommended from age 4 and pushchairs can go all the way round, and the fables are set against the France of Louis XIV, with a scientific committee led by a Sorbonne specialist in La Fontaine behind the text, so there is something for adults as well as for children meeting the fables for the first time.

It held 4.63 from 7,920 reviews on Fever on 10 November 2026, with reviewers praising it for children and adults alike. Choose it for a family afternoon in the 8th, when a headset walk is not possible because a child is under 8: everything here is for all ages and the audio works in English. Le Bristol Paris is the closest of our hotels, about 1 km or 13 minutes on foot, with Shangri-La Paris 17 minutes away and Hôtel de Crillon 21.

Its nearest rival is the Atelier des Lumières at 38 rue Saint-Maur in the 11th, where a 52-minute Renaissance projection show (4.49 from 5,834 reviews on Fever that day, from 13 euros before fees) is shorter, cheaper and aimed at art lovers rather than at families who want rooms to walk through. Older children who want a headset should look at Napoleon: The Immersive Saga on rue du Louvre, or Les Origines de Paris along the Seine. For an evening afterwards, see our page on Candlelight concerts.

Booking direct does not seem to be cheaper online. The official site’s Billets button goes to Fever. It quotes adults from 19.90 euros and young people from 13.90, a euro below what Fever showed on every date we read to 31 December 2026, so those prices may belong to other dates, and it says tickets can also be bought at the desk in the gallery, without publishing the desk price.