Paris Museums List
Below is a comprehensive list of of links to every museum in Paris with a website. (Note, there are a few very small museums that do not yet have websites, which do not appear.)
We hope you find our list useful. Be sure and check out the list of free museums on the right hand side of the page, too (these museums are owned by the city and do not charge admission to their permanent collections, although special exhibitions usually do charge admissions).
The names of the museums are links to their websites. Just click on the link to any of the museum titles below to visit the museum's website, where you will find all the relevant detail information.
Some Paris museum websites are only in French, but most have an English version of the site, for which you can find links on the homepage.
We are in the process of updating and expanding the brief descriptions of each museum. Check back often to take advantage of this unique Paris resource.
Parts of this page were prepared in cooperation with Context Tours
In alphabetical order / Titles are links
Air et de l'Espace, Musée de l'
(air and space)
Années Trente, Musées des
(the history of 1930s)
ARCHITECTURE ET DU PATRIMOINE, Cité de l'
(French architecture and monuments)
Permanent Collection Free
In a city renowned for both its architecture and its museums, it was only a matter of time before a museum would be created for the architecture of the city itself. The Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine—the largest center of architecture of its kind in the world—is not altogether a new invention in Paris. It is instead the amalgamation of numerous institutions whose convergence has been over twenty years in the making. Housed in the Palais de Chaillot, its renovation was itself a great undertaking of architectural conservation by Jean-François Bodin. To accomplish the difficult task of displaying the history of French architecture inside a museum, the curators at the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine employ both the more traditional display of architectural drawings, models, and paintings, as well as life-size fragments and reproductions of buildings. Many of these works come from the collections of the Musée des Monuments Français, most notably the great fragments of medieval churches. However some of these enormous pieces were also newly commissioned for the museum, including a full-scale reproduction of one of the apartments from Marseille’s Unité d’Habitation residential complex designed by the iconic Modernist architect, Le Corbusier. The museum’s permanent exhibits, educational facilities, and program of temporary exhibits promise to capture the interests of both the general public and specialized design professionals.
Armée, Musée de l' (French military history)
ARSENAL, Musée de l'
(Paris architecture and urban planning)
The Pavillon de l’Arsenal is the center for information, documentation and exhibitions about architecture and urbanism in Paris. Here one will find a permanent exhibition about the history of the development of Paris on the ground floor, as well as an engaging series of temporary exhibitions that highlight the latest issues facing urbanism and architecture in Paris on the floor above. Built within a large warehouse space, the design of the exhibitions often become architectural installations in and of themselves. It is also the location of lectures and debates where some of the most important local and international architects, urban planners, theorists, and critics will discuss new projects and plans for the future of Paris. Its research center, photo library, video room, and bookstore make it a great resource for architects, city planners, and anyone interested in the highly active world of architecture and urbanism in Paris.
ARTS ET METIERS, Musée des
(history of science and technology)
The triumphantly renovated Musée des Arts et Métiers, in both a modern stone structure and the 4th century l’Eglise St-Martin, is the French answer to the Museum of Science and Industry, and the answer resonates astoundingly. The museum houses over 80,000 objects relating to the history of science and practically all of them are on display, exquisitely restored and lovingly cared for by a passionate and motivated staff. While the place decidedly (and characteristically) credits France with the greatest scientific achievements and doesn’t miss a beat when praising French scientists and innovators, there is a large breadth of objects in the collection from Renaissance Italy, to feudal China and Japan, to the US at the turn of the century. This is an amazing spot for children who will be occupied for hours, parents too, as you navigate the vast collection of Louvre proportions.
ART MODERNE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS, Musée d'
(City of Paris modern art collection)
Permanent Collection Free
The colossal art deco structure, the Palais de Tokyo, was designed by architects Dondel and Aubert for the 1937 World’s Fair and was to house a vast modern art collection long before the idea for the Centre Georges Pompidou dawned in the consciousness of art savvy Parisians. However, when Pompidou was built most of the good stuff from the Palais de Tokyo went with it leaving a smaller, less comprehensive permanent collection and an enormous museum with fewer grants to fund its upkeep. Today, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is still worth seeing for it’s concentrated collection of the works of artists such as Derain, Léger, Robert Delaunay, Bonnard, and Soutine and its contemporary art section.
Assistance Publique / Hôpitaux de Paris, Musée de (Paris hospital history)
BALZAC, Maison de
(life and work in the home of Honoré de Balzac)
Permanent Collection Free
“To work means to wake up each evening at midnight, to write until eight o’clock, take a quarter of an hour for breakfast, work until five o’clock, have dinner, go to sleep and start again the next day,” once proclaimed the granddaddy of the French roman. This spirit is dually represented in the flat looking home, where Balzac lived and worked obsessively on his masterpiece la Comédie humaine. In a faded corner of the now filthy rich and bourgeois 16th arrondissement, at the time the banlieue Passy, Balzac found refuge from his blood-hungry creditors from 1840-1847 and assumed a false name to throw them off: M. de Breugnol. The garden outside has benches and grapevines and overlooks a modern skyline mixed with 16th arrondissement grandeur.
Bouchard, Musée (life and work of sculptor Emile Bouchard)
BOURDELLE, Musée
(life and work of sculptor Antoine Bourdelle)
Permanent Collection Free
Housed in the artist's former studio, occupied by Bourdelle from 1884 to 1929, the Musée Bourdelle stands as a monument to the sculptor who's work would become synonymous with an avant-garde monumental style. Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, under the Romantic master Alexandre Falguiere, Antoine Bourdelle would move quickly towards the development of a style of his own, distinguished by its massive forms and sinuous silhouettes. It was this modernist aesthetic that would earn Bourdelle praise from the likes of Rodin, and the critics Anatole France and André Gide, as well as numerous important exhibitions during the course of his long career, from Bucarest to Bruxelles. Beginning around 1910, Bourdelle's busy studio (where the sculptor Alberto Giacometti would his training) began receiving increasingly large-scale commissions, most notably for the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, designed by Auguste Perret and decorated by Bourdelle. The maquettes for these for monumental bas-reliefs, alongside numerous other sketches and finished works by the artists are preserved in the this museum, whose grand hall—with its high ceilings and vast sky-lights—is exemplary of the sculptors studios of the late-19th and early 20th centuries.
CAMONDO, Musée Nissim de
(home, art and objects of banker Nissim de Camondo)
A trove of 18th-century French furniture and objets d'art, this museum also offers a glimpse at wealthy, fin-de-siècle Paris. The three-story mansion, inspired by the Petit Trianon, was home to the Comte Moïse Camondo, a banker friend of Proust's, and has been left much as it was when the comte died in the early 1930s. He named his collection after a son Nissim, lost to WWI. The rooms are overflowing with rococo objects, some having belonged to the big names of the period, like Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette. Among the paintings is a splendid portrait of a woman by Vigée-Lebrun in the grand salon, and a suite of pastoral scenes by Huet in the aptly named salon des Huet. But as most of the mansion is open to the public, you will also find a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the workings of luxury living in post-Haussmann Paris. From the master bedroom overlooking the Parc Monceau to the austere servants' dining area tucked behind the kitchen, there's a palpable sense of how lives could be lived side-by-side, under one roof, yet always worlds apart.
CARNAVALET, Musée
(history of the City of Paris)
Permanent Collection Free
The grandeur, the esteem, the innovation, the brilliance, the blood, sweat, and tears of Parisian history from prehistory to the 20th century are marvelously on display for all to see at the Musée Carnavalet. To understand today’s Paris, it is imperative to study up on the nobles, politicians, artists, and writers who shaped the Paris of yesterday into the Paris we now know and love. The Musée Carnavalet delves deep into the splendid, fanfare filled yet elusive French capital, taking time to explore every aspect, no matter how miniscule (from the Louis XV’s shaving kit to Roman coins), of Parisian history with flare that is uniquely, unmistakably Parisian. Today the museum is a cavernous trove of over 140 rooms, brimming with historical pleasures to the eye; a fitting transformation for the former home of Madame de Sévigné, who entertained those in the know in her famous literary salons during the Enlightenment. The collections range from archeology, to painting, to sculpture, to furniture, to odds and ends that simply can’t be described.
Catacombs (tunnels and buried bones)
Permanent Collection Free
CARTIER, Fondation (contemporary art exhibits)
A façade-less glass building in the signature style of the architect Jean Nouvel, the Fondation Cartier for Contemporary Art is a private institution in Montparnasse that carries you away from the grey and heavy atmosphere of Haussmanian Paris and the traffic of Boulevard Raspail to project you into a quiet, green cultural oasis in which nature, technology and glamour coexist and enrich each other. The building acts as a public showcase for the Fondation Cartier, whose commitment consists in creating a collection of works by living artists across several medias: video, photography, painting, sculpture and monumental installations. Exhibitions include well-renown names, like American noir director David Lynch, as well as those of younger artists, like British hyper-realist sculptor Ron Mueck. If you find yourself in the neighbourhood, this place is well worth taking a refreshing trendy break from the dusted monuments of jazz-age Montparnasse.
CARTIER-BRESSON, Fondation Henri
(photography)
"Neither museum, nor mausoleum," the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation is a calm and bright site dedicated to preserve and display not only the works of the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) but his very artistic legacy. In fact, most space in this narrow glass building, an award-winning 1912 project that used to be the studio of a Montparnasse artist, is taken up by temporary exhibitions of other photographers, painters, sculptors and illustrators who worked in the documentary spirit of Cartier-Bresson. Considered to be the father of photo-journalism, and co-founder of the Magnum agency, Henri Cartier-Bresson was trained as a painter and worked in the cinema. While on a trip to Africa in 1930, he bought his first camera, a 35mm Leica that is now on permanent display on the top floor of the Foundation alongside a changing selection of the artist’s photographs. In the course of his long life, Cartier-Bresson travelled around the world to document countries, wars, artists, celebrities and politicians, briefly, history itself.
CERNUSCHI, Musée
(Asiatic arts)
Permanent Collection Free
Founded in 1898, the Musée Cernuschi is one of the oldest museums in Paris, and the capital’s second museum of Asian art (second in scale, though not in quality, to the Musée Guimet). Housed in the neo-classical mansion built by the museum’s founder, the Italian-born banker Henri Cernuschi (1821-1898), the building stands at the entrance to the majestic Parc Monceau. Focused on the field of Chinese art, the works assembled by Cernuschi span a vast historical spectrum, from pre-historic bronzes and Neolithic pottery fragments to 13th-century buddhist funerary sculpture. Since the museum’s creation, in 1896, the Cernuschi foundation has also added considerably to its founder’s legacy, acquiring in particular a remarkable collection of 20th-century Chinese paintings. Having undergone a massive renovation in 2002, the world-renowned masterpieces of this little-known museum are once again accessible to amateurs of Eastern art. Of special interesr are the painted scrolls of the Kuo Yu-Sho bequest, gifted to the museum in 1953—some of the finest in the world. Alongside its permanent collections, the museum organizes temporary exhibitions on a wide range of themes, generally concentrating on the arts of the Korea, Japan and China.
Chasse et de la Nature, Musée de la (hunting)
CINEMATHEQUE FRANÇAISE
(history of cinema)
Established in 1936 in the Palais du Chaillot, the Cinémathèque Française moved into the former home of the American Center of Paris in 2005. Designed by famed American architect Frank Gehry, the building resembles in form if not material, the architect’s later titanium-clad Bilbao Guggenheim museum. Established by some of the most notable French film directors, its wealth of film archives and its library (since 2007 containing the former collections of the Bibliothèque National de Film) make it a valuable resource for those in the film industry, academic researchers, as well as the general public. The Cinémathèque Française’s official mission is to restore films, maintain their archives, and host retrospectives that pay homage to important players in France’s long filmmaking history. There is a permanent exhibition of objects that present the technological evolution of the French and global film industries, as well as an annual series of temporary exhibitions that present materials from their own rich collections.
CLUNY, Musée National du Moyen Age
(history and art of the middle ages)
Combining the remains of ancient Roman baths and a 15th-century monk’s residence, the Museum of the Middle Ages is an eclectic mix. Its main strength is a broad range of secular objects that give a strikingly vivid sense of medieval European life. From furniture to kitchenware, to combs and other fashion accessories, these suggest just how sophisticated society was 500 years ago. Although some of the art treasures of the period are housed at the Louvre, the rest are here. Highlights include the Lady with the Unicorn tapestry series (room 13), a renowned 15th-century Flemish masterpiece. These six stunningly-colored tapestries celebrate worldly pleasures and nature’s wonders, in strong contrast to more somber depictions of the time. The pleasant, but sometimes crowded, public park behind the museum is designed to resemble a medieval garden, with historically accurate plantings.
COGNACQ-JAY, Musée
(home and art of businessman Ernest Cognacq)
Permanent Collection Free
This Marais gem of a museum, located in the Hôtel Donon, presents a copious collection of 18th century paintings, sculpture, and furniture from the founder of the Parisian’s favorite department store: La Samaritaine. Ernest Cognacq started off as a dry goods peddler on the Pont Neuf and envisioned the shopping mecca that is now a few paces from the bridge. Despite modest beginnings, Cognacq had a taste for all things bourgeois and together with his wife, Marie-Louise Jay (hence the hyphen), he collected sumptuous 18th century do-dads and larger works that once graced the salons, dining rooms, bedrooms, and decorated walls of the French aristocracy before the guillotine got them. The museum’s endless collections are nestled tastefully in the many circuitous and high ceilinged rooms, spread out over 4 floors.
Curie, Musée (the life and work of Marie Curie)
DALI, Espace
(painter, sculptor Salvador Dali)
Like the controversial personality of the artist to whom it is dedicated, the Espace Dalí in Montmartre is an overwhelming experience that defies conventional aesthetics and cultural categories. In a disquieting underground space, formerly used to display the history of Montmartre, one can see an inconsequential array of works by the Catalan artist, from engravings to sculptures and furniture. Dalí’s aficionados can purchase some of these artefacts in the nearby gallery, where they are sold at prices relatively accessible for modern art. The reason for this is the inflation of mass-produced works by Dalí that the artist himself initiated. In fact, it looks as if Dalí’s artistic encounters with Montmartre (in 1929 and 1956) have provided no more than a convenient touristy location for yet another speculative venture generated by the artist’s inheritance. In its upfront interest for profit and publicity, however, the activity of this museum is ultimately faithful to the provocative spirit of Salvador Dalí, who boasted the anagrammatic nickname "Avida Dollars." The outcome proved successful: thanks to the popular visionary imagination of the artist, the Espace Dalí has imposed itself as a hit among the tourist attractions of Montmartre.
Dapper, Musée (oriental art, artifacts)
DECORATIFS, Musée des Arts
(decorative arts)
With a collection of 150,000 objects, the Musée des Arts Decoratifs offers a unique and comprehensive look into every conceivable kind of decorative art in France. From stained glass to wallpaper to doll houses, the museums collections span the Middle Ages until the present day, with a particular emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. French interior designer François Joseph Graf contributed to the unique presentation of the museum’s vast collections, organized chronologically and thematically. With 6,000 objects on permanent display and temporary exhibitions throughout the year that engage areas as diverse as advertising and fashion, the museum offers a comprehensive view into the French art of living, its artists, craftsmen, and industrialists.
Découverte, Palais de la (kids' discovery)
DELACROIX, Musée Eugene
(home and studio of painter Eugene Delacroix)
Off the tiny Place Fürstemberg, away from the mobs on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, we find the calm and insulated studio of one of the greats of French painting, Delacroix. Through a distinctly Parisian courtyard, up a steep wooden staircase, is situated the artist’s home and studio where he spent the last peaceful years (1857-1863) of his celebrated career. The aging and ailing Delacroix moved here to be closer to his work at the nearby church, Saint-Sulpice, and it is here that he found solace in the care of his domestique and supposed lover, Jenny Le Guillou. The museum is scrupulously organized. Start in the salon and take in pastels of landscapes and biblical scenes. The bibliothèque is where visitors waited to greet the artist in his studio. In the bedroom where he drew his last breaths, a Delacroix portrait hangs of Jenny who faithfully cared for him until the end. Also, “Le Lit Defait” (The Unmade bed) hints eerily to the atmosphere at the time of his death.
Erotisme, Musée de l' (erotic art and artifacts)
Forains, Musée des Arts (circus art)
Fragonard, Musée (the history and making of fragrances)
Galliera, Musée (fashion)
Permanent Collection Free
Grevin, Musée (wax museum)
Grand Orient de France, Musée de (hitory of Freemasons)
GRAND PALAIS
(venue for major temporary exhibitions)
One of the surviving attractions of the 1900 World Fair, the Grand Palais has recently renewed its original exhibition function after the restoration of its emblematic steel-and-glass nave. Since the beginning of the twentieth century this suggestive space has housed events whose role was pivotal to the development of modern art, like the Autumn Salon and the Salon of Independent Artists. The new Grand Palais continues that tradition by exhibiting each year a colossal one-man project by contemporary artists called Monumenta, and a number of important art fairs and shows. On its Champs-Elysées side (with entrances from the Avenue du Général Eisenhower) the building houses the Galleries of the Grand Palais. Here have been showcased some of the most prestigious exhibitions happening in France since 1964. The back of the building is the site of the Palais de la Découverte (Discovery Palace), a vast science museum that opened its doors in 1937. The occasion was another world fair, the last to take place in Paris under the title "Exhibition of the Arts and Techniques of Modern Life." The Palais la Découverte, with its strong educational character and its rich programme of learning activities for children and teenagers, adds to the overall Grand Palais function as a temple dedicated to pass down French cultural politics to the newer generations.
GUIMET, Musée National des Arts Asiatiques
(ancient to modern asian art)
No one ever said Paris was a mecca for Asian art, but the Musée Guimet is. If you’re looking for a refreshing take on the Paris museum, and you’ve taken about as much classical and Impressionist art as you can handle, head over to this delightful and fascinating museum which houses an astounding collection of Asian art snatched by last-century art collector Emile Guimet. The museum fills a void in the maze of Paris museums for non-Western art and answers to an exploding Asian population and Asian art enthusiasts. Reopened in 2001 after a smashing success of a renovation, the Musée Guimet offers scrolls, sculptures, fans, pottery, jewelry, clothing, statues, and paintings from Japan, China, Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, India, Nepal, Tibet, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The minimalist setting allows the treasures to sparkle in gray stone, white walls, and sun-filled rooms. Temporary exhibits host contemporary Asian artists.
Histoire de France Archives Nationales, Musée de l' (valuable rare documents)
Homme, Musée de l' (study of man)
HUGO, Maison de Victor
(home and workspace of writer Victor Hugo)
Permanent Collection Free
It is here in the Hôtel de Rohan-Guéménée, at the long fashionable, hors de prix address, la Place des Vosges, that Victor Hugo, the VIP of the French literary aristocracy, lived between 1832 and 1848 with wife Adèle and his brood of 4. Today, real estate is through the roof in this grand corner of the Marais and the pomposity of the area is reflected in the museum’s dark, silk brocade lined walls, and rooms where daylight sneaks through the heavy velvet curtains that remain perpetually drawn. The visitor is presented with a chronicle of Hugo’s illustrious career by progressing from room to room where each theme in his writings is portrayed. Although the master lived and worked here, the place is practically void of any signs that the famille Hugo once ate, slept, and went about daily life in these quarters. Rather, Hugo’s former apartments exhibit manuscripts in his faint but roughly legible hand with whole passages crossed out and the modern day equivalent of “notes to self,” his own pen and ink renderings of sets and costumes for his plays, and the characters that peppered his novels.
JACQUEMART-ANDRE, Musée
(spectacular home and art collection of famous couple)
The former home of art collectors Nélie Jacquemart and Edouard André. For a late 19th century bourgeois couple with extensive means and a love of art, you might expect to link their names with the Impressionists or even the Montmartre movement, but Jacquemart and André were thoroughly obsessed with a bygone era: the Italian Renaissance. An eccentric couple deeply in love, the Jacquemart-Andrés spent gobs of money on the opulence that today adorns the mansion. They hired the architect Parent, who wanted to make a splash after having been beat out for the Paris opera house by Garnier, to design their home. Just by strolling up the marble hall into the impeccably maintained courtyard that stands in front of the imposing structure, the visitor senses the richness of the collection ahead. Stroll through glorious, gleaming, gilded salons. French painters of the 17th and 18th centuries are well represented: Boucher, Chardin, Drouais, Fragonard, and Greuze. The salon de thé is absolutely lovely and overlooks the courtyard.
JEU DE PAUME (photogrphy, installations, cinema, images)
Originally a tennis court, the Jeu de Paume is a national museum located on the north-west corner of the Tuleries Gardens, opposite the mirroring building of the Orangerie. Built in the second half of the nineteenth century, both buildings were conceived as amenity additions to the now-lost Tuileries Palace for the Emperor Napoleon III. In 1909 the Jeu de Paume was transformed into an exhibition space for living artists. Following its refurbishment in 1922, it becomes an annex of the Luxembourg Museum (the then French museum of contemporary art), and houses a permanent collection of contemporary foreign artists living in France, the so-called École de Paris. The building is also infamously known for having stored the property looted under the Nazi occupation of Paris to the French Jewish community. From 1947 to the opening of the Musée d’Orsay in 1986, the Jeu de Paume went back to house Impressionist paintings. The present-day Jeu de Paume is the head quarter of a multi-site contemporary art institution whose other permanent branch is located on the elegant premises of the 17-century Hôtel de Sully in the Marais. Both sites of the Galeries Nationals du Jeu de Paume are dedicated to photography-derived art practises (video, installations, cinema), and display rotating exhibitions of living artists, as well as the photographic collection of the French State. The Jeu de Paume also organises off-site exhibitions and educational activities related to its programme.
JUDAISME, Musée d'Art et Histoire du
(Jewish art and history)
While not in the Jewish quarter proper, this museum bends over backward to “explore Judaism’s different transmissions in the communities where they developed”, and that includes the now ethnically chic Rue des Rosiers in Paris. The museum also does a fine job representing Jewish peoples from Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the parts of the Middle East. In the palatial Hôtel de Saint-Aignan, a white stone fortress in the Marais, the museum exhibits moving and comprehensive displays from all brackets of Jewish life in an elegant and immaculate fashion.
Lettres et Manuscrits, Musée des (rare and vauable documents)
LOUVRE, Musée du
Whether it’s your first séjour in France or your umpteenth visit, you are, no doubt, familiar with the glory of the Louvre, arguably the world’s largest and greatest art museum. You are one among millions of annual visitors who will have nudged, pushed, or downright shoved your way through the thick hordes of international tourists, vying for a glimpse of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Van Eyck’s Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, Giorgione’s Concert Champêtre, and Delacroix’s Liberty Guiding the People. After three decades of frenzied renovations, bureaucratic mud-slinging, art historian tantrums, and a spanking new entrance in the form of a glass pyramid by architect I.M. Pei, the Louvre has finally got its act together, and unlike days of yore, a visit is indeed possible without collapsing from exhaustion in front of the 186-karat Regent Diamond or getting desperately lost in the red brocaded salons of Napoléon III. However, you should prepare for a taxing day with its fair share of crowd-induced stress. The trick is to pace oneself, breezing by the most famous works if you have limited time, or breaking the visit up over two days for a more leisurely taste of the Louvre.
LUXEMBOURG, Musée de
(major exhibition space and museum)
Located next to the Luxembourg Palace, the seat of the French Senate, the former Musée du Luxembourg originally housed a permanent collection of mostly nineteenth-century painting and sculpture. In 1818, in the years following the fall of the Empire, the restored Bourbon monarch Louis XVIII approved the creation of a museum entirely given over the work of living artists. For much of the nineteenth-century and into the twentieth, the Luxembourg welcomed “contemporary” art bought by the State from the annual Paris Salons. The ever-growing collection moved to the building occupied by the present exhibition space, which runs from the façade on the rue Vaugirard to the Orangerie of the Luxembourg gardens, in 1886. And there it remained until 1977, when the works of art were divided up between the newly constituted Museum consecrated to nineteenth-century art, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Musée national d’Art Moderne. Emptied of its treasures, the space has now become a gallery for lavishly organized, but poorly conceived temporary blockbuster exhibitions organized by the Senate and the Ministry of Culture. Dramatic lighting, flashy accoutrements and some spectacular loans (thanks, in all likelihood, to the diplomatic heft exerted by the Culture Ministry) attempt to make up for confused installations and lack of curatorial rigor. Recent shows have included (mis)treatments of Titian, Botticelli and Raphael. Despite the cheap theatrics, shows at the Luxembourg are thronged with eager visitors, who wait hours in lines snaking around the building.
Magie, Musée de (magic)
MAILLOL, Musée
(work of sculptor Astride Maillol, and his contemporaries)
Unpretentiously nestled among the antique shops and high fashion boutiques of the 7th arrondissement, the Musée Maillol houses a delightful collection of little known works by your favorite 20th century artists and the totality of the works of sculptor, painter, woodworker, and textile artist Aristide Maillol. The museum is of manageable size and presents a wide breadth in its permanent collection as well as temporary exhibits to boot. Dina Vierny, founder of the museum, met Aristide Maillol when she was just 15 and she eerily resembled the face and body of the female figure Maillol had been sculpting for years. From then on, the two had a close relationship and Vierny posed for Maillol’s most successful works as well as his contemporaries Matisse (Olympia), Bonnard (Grand Nu sombre), and Raoul Dufy. After Maillol’s death and a brilliant career as an art dealer, Vierny, who discovered artists such as Serge Poliakoff, opened the Fondation Dina Vierny and with it, the Musée Maillol. Maillol’s female sculptures are a great deal more buxom than those of his contemporaries.
Marine, Musée National de la (maritime)
MARMOTTAN, Musée
(Medieval, Second Empire and Impressionist art)
For die-hard Monet fans, this is the place for you. Situated practically outside the city limits of Paris, the Musée Marmottan houses an eccentric collection of Medieval art, Second Empire art, and Impressionists, but the main attraction here is Monet’s Water Lilies. Located in the basement of the museum, the Monet section features other Monet favorites such as Norway. The Red Houses at Bjornegaard, Le Pont Japonais, Weeping Willow, The Boat, La Locomative, Promenade près d’Argenteuil, and Impression, Soleil Levant as well as one of the master’s sketchbooks. Now on to what you really came for: the Water Lilies. Check out the deep blues, greens, purples, reds, and pinks, in the characteristic broad brush strokes that made Monet famous. This may inspire you to take a trip out to Giverny, Monet’s favored residence where he painted the works that won him the most revere.
Mode et du Textile, Musée de la (fashions and textiles)
Monnaie, Musée de la (money and minting)
MONDE ARABE, Institut de
(Arab art and cultural center)
Conceived as a cultural interlocutor between France and the Arab world, the Institut du Monde Arabe is also one of Paris’ contemporary architectural masterpieces by French architects, Jean Nouvel, Pierre Soria, and Architecture Studio. The building’s south façade, composed of kinetic diaphragms that open and close throughout the day, was inspired by traditional Arabic geometrical patterns. The IMA contains a library, media center, and museum located around a central courtyard. The museum’s collections consist of works from throughout the Arab world, spanning from present-day Morocco to Central Asia. Organized chronologically from pre-Arab civilizations, such as that of the Phonecians, to the 20th-century, the IMA’s collection is one of the most comprehensive collections of Arab works of art in the world. The library boasts a collection of 65,000 documents available in numerous languages, and caters to researchers from many of the nearby universities in the Latin Quarter. With an ongoing program of temporary exhibitions, the IMA is an active resource and representation of the art and history of the Arab world within the heart of Paris.
MONTMARTRE, Musée de
(history and art produced in Monmartre)
The Museum of Montmartre is the heir of a long tradition aimed at preserving the heritage and charms of what was originally a rural area from the urbanisation that came in with its inclusion to Paris in 1860. The Museum bears witness to the thousand-years history of Montamartre, with reconstructions and explanations of its changing character, from the time when it was the site of a powerful abbey to the decades of bohemian life and cabaret debauchery brought in by modern artists. The permanent collection features advertisement posters for the spots that attracted generations of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters to these slopes: the humorous running rabbit of the Lapin Agile, the iconic Art-Nouveau cat of Le Chat noir, and the alluringly lascivious scenes created by Toulouse-Lautrec for the Divan japonais. Yet, the real highlight of this mostly documentary museum consists in its location. Occupying the oldest building in Montmartre, a sixteenth-century mansion owned by a Molière actor and by the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir among others, the Museum and its garden are an oasis of green, quietness and incredible views on Montmartre that provide a break from the crowded paths of this area’s touristy routes. Here time seems to stand still, and visitors are transported back into the magical atmosphere of Montmartre’s unique history.
MONTPARNASSE, Musée du
(temporatly exhibitions about the history of Montmartre)
Located in a quiet private ally a few steps from the imposing Montparnasse tower, this tiny but rich museum brings its visitors back to the years when this area of southern Paris was home to avant-garde artists and intellectuals. Surrounded by the studios of contemporary artists – like that of the Brazilian eco-combatant Frans Krajcberg—the Musée de Montparnasse occupies the premises of Marie Vassilief’s atelier between 1912 and 1929. Born in Russia, Marie came to Paris as a young woman to study painting under the supervision of Henri Matisse. She soon became a point of reference to her exiled fellow citizens founding the Russian Academy of Paris. In addition to, she acted like a mother to many of the younger artists living in Montparnasse at the time, like Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani. During World War I, Marie Vassilief generously converted her studio into a canteen to provide cheap meals and drinks to starving artists. It quickly became a lively gathering place to a fervent community that counted Trotski and Lenin among its customers. Hosting regular exhibitions of past and present life in Montparnasse, the Musée de Montparnasse keeps alive Marie Vassilief’s project of transforming this site into a lighthouse for the local community.
MOUREAU, Musée Gustave
(painter Gustave Moureau)
In the heart of the Nouvelle Athènes (New Athens) in the ninth arrondisement, this house-museum is consecrated to the life and work of symbolist painter Gustave Moreau (1826-1898). It is nestled in the (former) bohemian quarter settled by artists, writers and musicians in the mid nineteenth century. The painter Horace Vernet and the actress Mademoiselle Mars, famous for her performances in plays by Victor Hugo, lived just around the corner. After studying with the neoclassical painter Picot, Moreau entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts and traveled extensively in Italy. The museum preserves his apartment and his magnificent studio, which takes up both of the airy top floors of the building. Moreau’s imaginative paintings of mythological and esoteric themes are hung Salon-style from floor to ceiling. His dreamy, often wacky, canvases combine Byzantine decorative motifs, sinuous Academic nudes and rich color in their exploration of esoteric subjects. Nourished by Romanticism, Moreau went on to explore lofty, almost proto-surrealist realms in a visionary style that was all his own. On the upper level, ingenious cabinets with framed pictures on rotating carousels allow visitors to peruse Moreau’s preparatory drawings and watercolors. The interior was originally designed by his father, an architect, but completely refurbished by Moreau in 1895 in the interest of creating the museum memorializing his artistic career. It is perhaps the best place in Paris for visitors to immerse themselves in the studio environment of an important nineteenth-century artist.
Moulin, Musée Jean (French Resistance / WWII)
Permanent Collection Free
Musique, Cité de la (history of musical instruments)
NAIF, Musée International de l'Art
(Naive Art)
In a thatched farm in the village of Vicq, just outside Paris, is housed the Musée d’Art Naif, the museum of ‘outisder’ art founded in 1973 by the collector Max Fourny. An avid patron of the arts with a special taste for ‘naïve’ or un-schooled artists, Fourny (together with his wife, the painter Françoise Adnet) scoured the globe in search of the ‘outsider’ artists who’s work (over 1500 objects in total) is housed in Fourny’s converted country home. Though the museum also comprises a scholarly research center, its collections are designed to appeal to a broad audience: those already versed in the in the field of ‘outsider’ art, as well non-connoisseurs, including children. The museum’s permanent collection comprises a fascinating array of artworks and ritual objects from the four corners of the world, offering a unique insight into the much maligned and misunderstood field of ‘primitive’ or ‘naïve’ art. In addition to the works on permanent display (the Fourny collection, alongside that of the Musée d’art naïf de Bages, acquired in 2004) the museum also organizes a regular program of temporary exhibitions.
Naturelle, Muséum National d'Histoire (natural history)
Notre Dame de Paris, Crypte Archéologique Parvis de (archeological dig)
Permanent Collection Free
ORSAY, Musée d'
The grand old Musée d’Orsay, deep in the aristocratic 7th arrondissement and a stone’s throw from the Seine, is flexing its newly renovated muscles, and brimming with Impressionist treasures for both the newcomer and the seasoned visitor to Paris. Like the Louvre and the Centre Georges Pompidou, you will be hard pressed to see everything in one day and the frenzied environment and chaotic lay-out of the former train station turned museum may inspire bleary-eyed memories of your pokey home town art museum, but fear not, this museum can and has been done. The collections are comprehensive and well-organized, themed and chronological. Portable information boards available in nearly all sections of the museum remedy the visitor’s overwhelming sense of futileness and general disorientation. Map is a must, needless to say. The museum, once the Belle Époque train station, Gare d’Orléans, is a lovely example of Art Nouveau architecture. From the outside, it appears somewhat austere, but upon entrance, the airy skylight ceiling, gigantic clock, and stylized metal work are stunning. Once inside, you’ll notice the place echoes. Not only voices and footsteps but the original bustling atmosphere of the former train station. People dash about madly trying to take in all the museum has to offer and the occasional pigeon swoops down from the lofty rafters.
ORANGERIE, Musée de l'
(Impressionist art)
After a complete make-over, completed in 2006, the former Orangerie located in the southwest corner of the Tuileries gardens is once again open to the public. The reconstruction retained the original sober external décor that dates to1852, when the building was erected as the winter quarters for orange trees and a storage space for marble. In the reorganized interior, the top floor now houses the series of paintings by Claude Monet, the Nymphéas (Waterlilies) that the impressionist painter offered to the State after the armistice in 1918 through his friend Georges Clemenceau. Natural light flooding in from above illuminates these masterpieces of Monet’s late career, which are hung in specially-designed elliptically-shaped rooms. Surrounded by an all-around painted panorama of water, vapor and aquatic plant-life, visitors can luxuriate in Monet’s sensorial abstracting of natural forms and atmosphere. Originally destined for the musée Rodin, the painting cycle was installed instead in the Orangerie and inaugurated there in 1927. In the early sixties, the Orangerie was enriched by an important group of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings from the Guillaume-Walter collection. Canvases gathered together by art dealer Paul Guillaume (1891-1934) include works by Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Amadeo Modigliani, and Chaim Soutine, among others.
PETITE PALAIS, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris (wide variety of the City's art collection)
Permanent Collection Free
Built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, the Petit Palais recently reopened to the public at the culmination of a lavish renovation. It forms, together with the Pont Alexandre III and the Grand Palais, an incomparable ensemble of ornamented monumental architecture characteristic of the Paris World’s Fairs. An eclectic mélange of architectural styles, the building was designed by Charles-Louis Girault on a trapezoidal plan. It is characterized by an ionic colonnade facing the Grand Palais and a flamboyant art nouveau porch. The extravagant metalwork grill, with its sinuous interlacing tendrils and flower motifs, is a conspicuous concession to the somewhat overwrought taste reigning at the turn of the century. The interior is decorated with numerous mural cycles, including one by the Nabi painter Maurice Denis entitled The History of French Art, completed in 1926. The permanent collection offers a survey of nineteenth-century painting, including masterpieces by such masters as Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, and Edouard Manet. Courbet is represented by several crucial works, including his naughty picture of two young ladies of questionable virtue reclining by the banks of the Seine. It raised eyebrows at the Salon of 1857. Several galleries display French paintings, furniture, tapestries, porcelain and enamelwork dating to the eighteenth century donated by the American collector Edward Tuck in 1921. The Petit Palais also hosts sculptures in terra-cotta and in plaster, preliminary studies by artists such as Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Jean Carriès and Jules Dalou, for public monuments commissioned by the city of Paris. Dalou, the rival of Auguste Rodin and the author of the massive bronze, Triumph of the Republic, standing in Place de la Nation, left the entire contents of his studio to the museum when he died in 1902. Countless terra-cotta sketches provide a glimpse into his mind and his method. More eclectic than the contents of the musée d’Orsay, the collection at the Petit Palais is nonetheless one of the richest troves of French art in Paris. Spacious galleries also periodically host top-quality temporary exhibitions.
PHOTOGRAPHIE, Maison Européenne de la
(contemporary and older photography)
The Maison Européene de la Photographie honors contemporary creation in the ever-changing field of photography. Step into the courtyard on a street off the teeming Rue de Rivoli and gage your first impression by the black and white pebble ying yang near the entrance and the overflowing beds of ivy. Located in the now faded and scuffed early 18th century Hôtel Hénault de Cantobre since 1990, the cool, austere museum painstakingly displays works by contemporary photographers in rotating 3 month cycles. The Maison is certainly a hot spot for up and coming photographers from around the world and renown retrospectives, often exhibiting in every room of the museum. In this way, the museum has the air of a gallery and visiting can often feel like you’re at an unveiling cocktail with savvy photo people.
PICASSO, Musée National
(work of paitner Pablo Picasso in a hôtel particulier)
The Musée Picasso is a bit of a monster. The collection, presenting works from all of the myriad periods of his career, takes at least an hour to see, even when you’re just breezing through. In the 17th century Hôtel Salé, the visitor circulates through a seemingly never ending complex of rooms on two floors, aided by multilingual plaques describing each foray in the playboy career of Pablo Picasso. The museum reiterates the fact that Picasso was involved in every major art movement during his lifetime, from the bohemian Montmartre crowd, to cubism and surrealism.
Police, Musée de la (police and crime fighting)
POMPIDOU, Centre Georges - Musée National d'Art Moderne (contemporary and modern art)
The Centre Pompidou, or as locals in the know refer to it, “Beaubourg,” is vast beyond belief. Ranking among the three most visited museums in Paris, including older, wiser cousins the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, the place is a veritable beehive of activity, innovation, tourists, Parisians, and art historians alike. Whether you come to Beaubourg for a cutting edge temporary exhibition, for its esteemed permanent collection, to do research at the library shoulder to shoulder with sleep-deprived students from the Sorbonne, to take in an art film, or to poke around the hodgepodge gift shop, you will step in with excitement and step out with the buzzing energy that effuses the Centre, that of a wacky yet serious learning atmosphere, usually swollen with people. The Centre Pompidou is the Parisian mecca of modern art. The collections encompass over 1400 works by the favorites in modern art: Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Duchamp, Kandinsky, Léger, Miró, Ernst, Giacometti, and Pollock, and many no name artists such as Sonia Delaunay, Georges Rouault, Nicholas de Staël, and Pierre Soulages.
QUAI BRANLY, Musée du
(primitive arts)
The Musée du Quai Branly, which opened in the summer of 2006, was the realization of former French president Jacques Chirac’s desire to house and expand the French state’s collections of "arts premier" from around the globe hitherto dispersed throughout museums in Paris. These collections are essentially composed of the works accumulated since France’s first significant 17th century contact with civilizations in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania. In the decade before its opening, the museum supplemented its collections with numerous acquisitions, distinguishing it today as possessing one of the most important collections of its kind. Situated on the Seine near the Eiffel Tower, the museum was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and hovers above a glass-enclosed public garden. Artists from around the world, whose sculptures, paintings and video installations have become permanent fixtures, collaborated in the museum’s design. The rooftop restaurant, cleverly named “Les Ombres” after the unique shadows cast by its sculptural glass roof modeled on a dragonfly’s wing structure, sits on an expansive roof terrace with an extraordinary view of both the city and the adjacent Eiffel tower.
Poste, Musée de la (post office)
Poupée, Musée de la (dolls)
Publicité, Musée de la (advertising)
RODIN, Musée
(house, garden and art of sculptor Auguste Rodin)
For the most famous French sculptor to walk the earth, a befitting museum, conceived towards the end of the artist’s celebrated life, was created in the 18th century Hôtel Biron and continues to attract flocks of visitors from around the world. You really don’t have to scour Paris for Rodin’s most renowned works; they are all here, including The Thinker, The Gates of Hell, The Kiss, and The Burghers of Calais. Not only is the location grand, a frilly mansion constructed by a rich financier to be the “finest town house in Paris” in the Rocaille style, but the works span the grand career of Auguste Rodin, the maître to whom the world kowtowed. Before Rodin took up residence at 77 Rue de Varenne, towards the end of his life, the place was home to a commune of artists including Isadora Duncan, Cocteau, Matisse, and Rilke. Word reached Rodin via these artists that plans for demolition were in motion and the master swooped in and saved it. In 1919, two years after Rodin’s well-publicized death, the museum opened its doors, with the blessing and specifications of the departed sculptor. The French State took possession of his collections, the most comprehensive assembly of Rodin originals to date.
ROMANTIQUE, Musée de la Vie
(life and work of writers George Sand and Ary Scheffer)
Permanent Collection Free
Originally built in 1830 as the house and studio of Dutch painter Ary Scheffer (1795-1858), this charming museum is dedicated to the art and major protagonists of the Romantic period. Set back from the road and nestled in a lovely garden, the Musée de la Vie Romantique remains one of the most tranquil and overlooked corners of Paris. Scheffer, together with Eugène Delacroix and Horace Vernet, played an important role in the Romantic challenge to a French Academic tradition and its rigorous classicism. In the tumultuous decades following the French Revolution, these painters created vibrantly colorful works celebrating heightened emotional states. They depicted scenes from Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, as in Scheffer’s series of pictures inspired by Faust. Several of the latter, together with his portraits of the Orléeans family, the reigning dynasty in France from 1830 to 1848, are exhibited on the second floor of the hotel Scheffer-Renan. The ground floor offers souvenirs, furniture and portraits belonging to George Sand (born Aurore Dupin de Francueil), the novelist, essayist and political campaigner. Her brand of sentimental literature, very popular during her lifetime, was later discredited by the rise of naturalism in the novels of Gustave Flaubert. Infamous for her cross-dressing and numerous exta-marital affairs with men such as Alfred de Musset, Sand had an extended liaison with the musician Frédéric Chopin. Her mementoes (plaster casts by the sculptor Auguste Clésinger; pencil portraits by Ingres; bronze medallion by David d’Angers) testify to a life lived at the epicenter of cultural life during the Romantic era. Scheffer’s former atelier is often given over to temporary exhibitions exploring the various aspects of this remarkable period.
Sciences et de l'Industrie, Cité des (science and technology)
Shoa, Mémorial de la (history and memorial of the Holocaust
TOKYO, Palais de
(contemporary art center and exhibition space)
The city’s most exciting and innovative venue for the exhibition and creation of contemporary art, the Palais de Tokyo occupies the west wing of the monumental art-deco palace created in 1937 to house the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris. Founded in 1999, and devoted specially to the work of young and emerging artists, the Palais was conceived as an interdisciplinary institution, showcasing fashion, video, film and dance alongside more traditional painting and sculpture. Marked from the outset by its "rock-and-roll" spirit of risk-taking and experimentation, the Palais’ emphasis on "youth culture" (its grand outdoor plaza transformed into an improvized skate park) continues to attract visitors of every age; its late-night cantina and more formal restaurant a favorite meeting place for Paris’ hip "jeunesse dorée." What the Palais’ temporary exhibitions (often marked by a seemingly hasty and ad-hoc selection and presentation) lack in substance, the site’s visitors more than make-up for in ‘underground’ style. Each exhibition is marked by a series of opening events, most scheduled in the evening, and often involving live music and dancing—the best way to appreciate the site’s unique blend of art and culture.
Vin, Musée du (wine)
ZADKINE, Musée
(life and work of sculptor Ossip Zadkine)
Permanent Collection Free
"The language of sculpture remains an empty pretense, if it is not composed of love and poetry."—Ossip Zadkine. In a small white house, reminiscent of a country cottage, in the Rue d'Assas, a stone's throw from the Luxembourg Gardens, is the Musée Zadkine. Its the former home and studio of the Russian-born scupltor Ossip Zadkine, who lived there from 1928 to his death in 1967. It was Zadkine’s wish that the house and garden be transformed into a parmanent exhibition space for his sculpted and graphic work, bequeathed to the museum by the artist's widow, Valentine Prax—an artist in her own right, whose work is exhibited alongside that of her husband. Having resolved, after a youthful visit to the British Museum, to become a sculptor, Zadkine—who trained in Paris at the Ecole nationale des beaux-arts – would fall under many of the same influences as his avant-garde friends and contemporaries, a circle that included Brancusi, Apollinaire and Picasso. The musée’s collections (including more than 300 sculptures, and as many works on paper), arranged chronologically, allow visitors to trace the evolution of Zadkine’s work, from his taste for "primitive" art, through his cubist and neo-classical periods. Since 1995, the sculptor's garden studio, also transformed into an exhibition space, has been used to host temporary exhibitions of mostly contemporary art.
