Orsay Museum (Musée d’Orsay) – Paris

Displaying works created between 1848 and 1914, the Musée d’Orsay includes within its extraordinary collection of more than ten thousand objects, the French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings revered by art lovers everywhere.  Housed in a magnificently rehabilitated former train station, there is no finer grouping of the breathtaking canvases of Cezanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh anywhere in the world.

In addition to the incomparable collection of paintings, the Orsay boasts galleries dedicated to photography, architecture, graphic arts and decorative arts as well as an impressive sculpture gallery lit by a sweeping glass and steel roof dating to 1900 and this building’s former incarnation as the most elegant train station in Paris.  Dining in the museum café directly under the huge, industrial age steel and glass clock also original to building is another of the Orsay’s distinct pleasures.

Because the museum includes such crowd pleasing works it is often filled to overflowing and requires an extensive wait in line just to enter.  Purchase your tickets in advance for early in the day and proceed immediately to the top floor galleries that house the Impressionist paintings.  You’ll avoid the crowds and enjoy unobstructed views of the paintings that define French artistic achievement.

Manet’s revolutionary “Olympia” and “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” are arguably the museum’s two most illustrious and celebrated paintings.  Other extraordinary highlights are Cezanne’s “Apples and Oranges”, Renoir’s “Bal du moulin de la Galette”, Monet’s “Poppies Blooming”, Degas’s “L’absinthe” , Van Gogh’s “Bedroom in Arles” and Gaugin’s “Tahitian Women on the Beach” which are among each artist’s finest individual achievements.

Additional standouts include groundbreaking classics of French Realism like Millet’s “Gleaners”, Courbet’s “The Artist’s Studio” and Caillebotte’s “The Floor Scrapers”. The American, James McNeil Whistler’s most famous painting “Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1” more commonly known as “Whistler’s Mother” is yet another one of the museum’s most popular attractions.

Do not miss Rodin’s “The Age of Bronze”, “The Gates of Hell” and “The Thought” on your stroll through the sculpture gallery.  Carved in marble, “The Thought” portrays the head of Camille Claudel, a famed sculptress in her own right whose majestic bronze “Maturity” stands nearby.  And be sure to seek out Degas’ “Small Dancer Age 14”, perhaps the museum’s most prominent sculpture and a favorite of adults and children alike.

There is no more complete repository of the finest works in the Impressionist canon, a movement that changed the way the world looked at painting.  Only open since 1986, it’s no small wonder the Musée d’Orsay has quickly become one of the planet’s most popular and preeminent museums.

Official Museum Site