Here, we report the photocatalytic degradation of aqueous paracetamol (Acetaminophen or N-acetyl-p-aminophenol, APAP) as a drug model under visible light in presence of opal and inverse opal photonic crystals (PC) derived from gold-L-cysteine and grafted on poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) nanoparticles. The L-cysteine grafted PMMA colloidal nanoparticles with average diameters of 170 and 200 nm were prepared by emulsion polymerization. The reduction of the gold ions (HAuCl4) by L-cysteine resulted in the formation of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) attached to the PMMA colloidal particles. The opal photonic crystals Au@PC170 and Au@PC200, formed by self-assembly of gold-L-cysteine-PMMA nanoparticles, were treated by the sol-gel method in the presence of a silica precursor. Therefore, two inverse opal photonic crystals (IOPCs): Au@SiO2(1) and Au@SiO2(2) were isolated following the polymer removal by calcination at 500 °C. The photocatalytic degradation of paracetamol (APAP) as a drug model was performed in the presence of the opal and inverse opal PCs. The results showed that 18.9 % of APAP photodegradation was obtained using the opal photonic crystals Au@PC200 after 2.5 hours, whereas 70.3 % of the photodegradation occurred instantaneously with the silica inverse opal photonic crystals Au@SiO2(2). Consequently, the inverse opal photonic crystals were proposed as a potential effective water cleaning photocatalyst under visible light irradiation.