The Navigo is a weekly transit pass card you can buy for unlimited use of the Métro, city buses, funiculars and other public transit services in Paris, France.

(For visits of one to three days, consider a Paris Visitei card. More...)

With your Navigo (NAH-vee-goh), you walk into any Métro station, touch the card to the Navigo target on the turnstile, and breeze right through. On a city bus, you touch it to a machine at the door where you board.

(If you've visited Paris before, you may remember the Carte Orange transit pass. The Carte Orange, a paper ticket with a magnetic stripe on the back, has been discontinued, and replaced by the Navigo.)

If you plan to stay in Paris at least a week, or nearly so, and you expect to use public transport several times daily, a Navigo pass can save you money. Because if its ease of use, it can save you bother no matter how often you use it.

Navigo is an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) card, so you don't have to insert it in a machine. You just bring it close to the RFID reader. Some people even keep the card in their purse or wallet and touch the purse or wallet to the RFID point to enter.

Navigos are of various kinds, most of them for pemanent residents of Paris. For short-term foreign visitors, the pass is available by the calendar week as the Navigo Découverte.

You will need a photo of your face, size 25 x 30 mm (1 x 1.25 inches), neutral expression, no hat, to obtain your Navigo pass. Self-service photo booths are available in major SNCF train, RER and Métro stations, yielding six small ID photos for 4€. Better yet, have someone take your photo at home, print it, and bring it with you.

You can buy your Navigo Découverte at most Métro ticket windows and some RER and Transilien ticket windows. You pay a one-time charge of 5€ for your Navigo Découverte card, including your Carte Nominative Transport and the transparent plastic frame that holds both cards together. The cards belong to you and can be recharged for transport repeatedly. If your Navigo is lost or stolen, you cannot relclaim its value. You must buy a new one.

You then pay 17.20€ for a calendar week of unlimited travel in Paris Zones 1 and 2, which cover virtually all of central, historic Paris, including St-Denis to the north and Vincennes to the east (but La Défense is just over the line in Zone 3. Here's a zone map on the RATP website.)

Validity starts on Monday and lasts through the following Sunday. You can buy your Navigo pass good for the following week starting on Friday, and it becomes valid at 00:01 (12:01 am) on Monday.

You can buy it on any day of the week, but if you buy it in the middle of the week, you won't get full value: you'll pay full price, but it will still expire at midnight on Sunday.

 

 

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