Petit Palais

The Petit Palais was built for the 1900 World's Fair as an exhibition hall and has held the City of Paris's fine arts museum ever since. Architect Charles Girault designed it alongside the larger Grand Palais across the Avenue Winston Churchill, the two forming a matched pair built for the same exposition and finished in the same year. Open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-18:00; closed Monday, with Friday-Saturday evening hours for selected exhibitions. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-18:00; closed Monday, with Friday-Saturday evening hours for selected exhibitions. Permanent collection admission is free; temporary exhibitions charge separately. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Metro Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau. Yes. Worship, events, maintenance, weather and security can change ordinary access. No. Special tours, exhibitions and upgrades use separate tickets. Open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-18:00; closed Monday, with Friday-Saturday evening hours for selected exhibitions. Permanent collection admission is free; temporary exhibitions charge separately. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Metro Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau. Open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-18:00; closed Monday, with Friday-Saturday evening hours for selected exhibitions. Permanent collection admission is free; temporary exhibitions charge separately. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Metro Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau. Yes. Worship, events, maintenance, weather and security can change ordinary access. No. Special tours, exhibitions and upgrades use separate tickets. Open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-18:00; closed Monday, with Friday-Saturday evening hours for selected exhibitions. Permanent collection admission is free; temporary exhibitions charge separately. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Metro Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau. Open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-18:00; closed Monday, with Friday-Saturday evening hours for selected exhibitions. Permanent collection admission is free; temporary exhibitions charge separately. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Metro Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau. Yes. Worship, events, maintenance, weather and security can change ordinary access. No. Special tours,

A permanent collection spanning antiquity to 1914, arranged around a semicircular garden courtyard under Girault's painted dome and colonnade. The permanent galleries cover ancient Greek and Egyptian objects, medieval and Renaissance art, and a strong 19th-century French holding that includes Courbet, Cézanne, Monet and a substantial group of works by Paris-based sculptor Auguste Carpeaux. The building's own decoration is part of the exhibit: painted ceilings, mosaic floors and wrought ironwork survive largely as built for 1900. Permanent collection admission is free; temporary exhibitions charge separately. Metro Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau.

An hour and a half for the permanent collection at a normal pace; the garden and café can be visited separately in a few minutes. The permanent galleries are laid out around the courtyard in a loop, so a visitor can walk the full ring without doubling back, spending more time in whichever period draws the most interest. Temporary exhibitions, when running, are ticketed separately and add their own hour depending on scale. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas.

Open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-18:00; closed Monday, with Friday-Saturday evening hours for selected exhibitions. Metro Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Permanent collection admission is free; temporary exhibitions charge separately. These operator details were current on 31 August 2026.

Permanent collection admission is free; temporary exhibitions charge separately. Open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-18:00; closed Monday, with Friday-Saturday evening hours for selected exhibitions. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Metro Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau. These operator details were current on 31 August 2026.

Metro Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-18:00; closed Monday, with Friday-Saturday evening hours for selected exhibitions. Permanent collection admission is free; temporary exhibitions charge separately. 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 10:00-18:00; closed Monday, with Friday-Saturday evening hours for selected exhibitions. Permanent collection admission is free; temporary exhibitions charge separately. Step-free entrances or public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. Historic surfaces, crowds and security remain relevant.

The semicircular colonnade around the garden courtyard, shot from the far end looking back toward the entrance, is the building's signature interior image and captures both the architecture and the garden in one frame. The painted dome above the entrance hall rewards looking straight up rather than across, and is easiest to shoot with the hall otherwise empty, early in the day. Permanent collection admission is free; temporary exhibitions charge separately.