Art to see in Paris: the Louvre, the Orsay and the Marmottan

The best-known art to see in Paris is in three museums. The Louvre has antiquity and the Old Masters, with the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory of Samothrace and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. The Musée d’Orsay has the 19th century, with Manet, Courbet, Degas, Morisot and Cézanne. The Musée Marmottan Monet has Monet's Impression, Sunrise, the painting that gave Impressionism its name.

Facts

The Louvre: from antiquity to Romanticism

The Louvre was a royal palace before it became a museum in 1793, during the Revolution. Today it is the world's most visited art museum, and the glass pyramid by the architect I. M. Pei of 1989 is its entrance. The collection is so large that it is better to choose a few works than to try to see everything.

At the top of a monumental staircase stands the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a winged goddess of victory from around 190 BC alighting on the prow of a ship. Leonardo's Mona Lisa hangs on a wall of its own behind protective glass in the Salle des États; read the guide to the Mona Lisa before you go, and you will know what to look for in the short time you get. French art follows in large rooms: Watteau's The Embarkation for Cythera of 1717, David's The Oath of the Horatii of 1784 and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People of 1830. With them you can see the whole way from Rococo via Neoclassicism to Romanticism in one afternoon.

Among much else there are also the Venus de Milo, the Egyptian and Mesopotamian collections and the Italian Renaissance masters in the long Grande Galerie.

The Musée d’Orsay: Realism and the Impressionists

The Orsay lies on the other side of the Seine, in a railway station built for the 1900 World's Fair and opened as a museum in 1986. The great hall with its glass roof and large clocks is an experience in itself. The museum covers the years between 1848 and 1914, and here are several of the works that changed the direction of art.

Courbet's A Burial at Ornans fills a whole wall, and Manet's Olympia of 1863 hangs not far away. The Impressionists are on the upper floors: Degas's The Dance Class, Berthe Morisot's The Cradle and many works by Monet, Renoir and Pissarro. Cézanne's The Card Players and van Gogh's late paintings show the way on into the 20th century. Read the guides to Realism and Impressionism.

The Marmottan and the Orangerie: Monet

The Musée Marmottan Monet is in a mansion in the 16th arrondissement, a little way from the centre, and has the world's largest collection of Monet's works, many donated by his son. Here hangs Impression, Sunrise of 1872, the harbour at Le Havre in morning haze. It was shown at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 and gave the movement its name. The painting was stolen in 1985 and recovered in 1990.

In the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Tuileries Garden, Monet's large Water Lilies paintings are displayed in two oval rooms built for them. They were painted in his garden at Giverny during his last decades and surround the visitor completely. If you confuse the names Monet and Manet, read the guide Monet or Manet?.

Churches, streets and the 20th century

Paris is also a museum of buildings. Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité, built in the 1240s to house the Crown of Thorns, has walls that consist almost entirely of stained glass. Right next to it stands Notre-Dame, which burned in 2019 and reopened in December 2024. The architecture section has more: the Centre Pompidou, the Opera and the Eiffel Tower.

Modern painting is found in the Centre Pompidou's Musée national d’art moderne, which closed in 2025 for extensive renovation, and in the Musée Picasso in the Marais. The Musée Rodin shows the sculptures of Auguste Rodin in his former house and garden. The history of French art, from the Middle Ages to the present, is in the app's French trail, with Impressionism among other topics.

Smaller museums worth a detour

The Musée de Cluny in the Latin Quarter is France's museum of the Middle Ages, in a Gothic town house beside the remains of Roman baths. Its best-known work is the tapestry series The Lady and the Unicorn of around 1500, six tapestries on the five senses and a sixth enigmatic image; see it in the design section.

Delacroix's last home and studio on the Place de Furstenberg is now the Musée national Eugène Delacroix. The Musée Gustave Moreau shows the Symbolist's house filled with his paintings and drawings, and the Musée Jacquemart-André has a private collection in a 19th-century mansion. Small museums like these often offer more peace than the big ones, and you can stand for a long time in front of a picture without crowds.

How to plan your visit

The Louvre and the Orsay lie opposite each other on either side of the Seine, and the Orangerie at the end of the same garden. It is possible to see them in two days, but it is better to choose one or two sections in each museum. Book tickets in advance, especially for the Louvre, and go early or late in the day.

On the app's map the museums are marked, and each work has a page of its own with facts and what to look for. Place two works side by side in Compare before the trip, for example Olympia and Impression, Sunrise. The guide Art to see in Stockholm does the same for the Nationalmuseum and Moderna Museet.

Don't miss

Exercise

Which museum in Paris has Monet's Impression, Sunrise?