Strike and protests take place on the 10th day of national mobilisation as Macron holds firm on his plans to raise to the retirement age from 62 to 64.
ADVERTISEMENTAround 740,000 people took part in protests in Paris, and 27 were arrested, according to the Interior Ministry, after President Emmanuel Macron rejected a proposal to pause his controversial pension reform plan.
The day of action called by unions is the tenth of its kind, with thousands took to the streets across France.
The Eiffel Tower's website announced that strikers had closed down the world-famous tourist attraction. The Louvre Museum was similarly strike-bound on Monday.
Concerns that violence could mar the large demonstrations prompted what Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin described as an unprecedented deployment of 13,000 officers, nearly half of them concentrated in the French capital.
Macron rammed the reforms through parliament using a special provision sidestepping any vote last week. Unions have vowed no let-up in mass demonstrations to get the government to back down.
A protester in central Paris told Euronews that "we are fed up, we just want the government to listen and understand we had enough".
Laurent Berger, Secretary General at the CFDT Trade Union, said both sides should discuss the changes.
"So let's take a month and a half, we say the 64 years old (retirement age) will not apply and we mediate," he said.
"And then we sit around the table and discuss the questions of retirement in order to see where there might or might not be a social compromise."
Strikes and rallies last Thursday, when more than a million people took to the streets across France, saw the most violent clashes yet between protesters and security forces as tensions erupted into pitched battles on the streets of Paris.