Musée d'Orsay

The Musée d'Orsay is a railway station that outlived its trains. The Gare d'Orsay was built between 1898 and 1900 on the Left Bank for the Exposition Universelle, by Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux, in full Beaux-Arts dress. It became a museum in December 1986, opened by François Mitterrand, with the interior reorganised across three levels by the Italian architect Gae Aulenti. The collection covers French art from 1848 to 1914 and holds the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist painting in the world.

Two thousand paintings and six hundred sculptures at opening, and the fifty-year window they cover is the reason the museum works. Van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Degas, Courbet, Cézanne, Renoir and Gauguin are all here, and they are here together, in the decades when they were arguing with each other. A museum that stops in 1914 tells that story better than one that runs from antiquity. Victor Laloux's great clock is the other exhibit. Adult online admission is EUR 16; Thursday evening and concession products vary. RER C Musée dOrsay or Metro Solférino.

Three hours, and go to the top floor first. The Impressionist galleries are on the fifth level and everyone arrives at them last, tired, at the busiest hour. Reversing the route is the single most useful thing anyone can do here. The nave and the sculpture take forty minutes on the way down. The nineteenth-century decorative arts and the Art Nouveau rooms take another forty and are usually empty. The building is smaller than the Louvre and can genuinely be seen in one visit, which the Louvre cannot. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas.

Open Tuesday-Sunday 09:30-18:00 and Thursday until 21:45; closed Monday. RER C Musée dOrsay or Metro Solférino. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Adult online admission is EUR 16; Thursday evening and concession products vary. These operator details were current on 31 August 2026.

Adult online admission is EUR 16; Thursday evening and concession products vary. The base amount and currency follow the operator tariff; premium products and separate institutions remain excluded unless named. Worship, events, maintenance, weather and security can change ordinary access.

RER C Musée dOrsay or Metro Solférino. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Open Tuesday-Sunday 09:30-18:00 and Thursday until 21:45; closed Monday. Adult online admission is EUR 16; Thursday evening and concession products vary. These operator details were current on 31 August 2026.

Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Open Tuesday-Sunday 09:30-18:00 and Thursday until 21:45; closed Monday. Adult online admission is EUR 16; Thursday evening and concession products vary. Historic surfaces, crowds and security remain relevant.

The clock face on the upper floor, shot from inside with the Right Bank behind it, is the picture that belongs to this building alone. Late afternoon puts light through it. The nave from the upper walkway, looking along the length of the old station under the glass roof, gives the scale that ground level hides. In the Impressionist galleries the works are unglazed and evenly lit, which makes them unusually easy to photograph — and unusually pointless to, since the reproduction of a Monet is not what you came for. Adult online admission is EUR 16; Thursday evening and concession products vary.