Musée d’Orsay

The Musée d'Orsay occupies the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built on the Left Bank for the Exposition Universelle of 1900. The station closed to main-line trains decades later, and the building reopened as a national museum in 1986, covering art from 1848 to 1914. It is best known for the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings anywhere, but it also holds sculpture, decorative arts, photography and furniture from the same period.

The central nave, with its arched glass roof and great station clock, is lined with 19th-century sculpture. The Impressionist galleries on the fifth floor bring together works by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley and Morisot, followed by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin and Seurat. Manet's Olympia and Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe hang on the lower floors. Do not miss the view through the transparent clock face on the upper level, which looks across the Seine towards the Louvre and Montmartre.

The museum is more manageable in size than the Louvre and suits first-time visitors, art students and anyone with a few hours to spare. It is free for under-18s and for EEA residents under 26, and everyone can enter free on the first Sunday of each month, although booking is mandatory on those days. Tickets bought online cost slightly more than at the museum but guarantee a time slot, and there is a cheaper rate for the Thursday evening opening.

Opening hours are 9.30am to 6pm from Tuesday to Sunday, with a late opening on Thursdays until 9.45pm. Last admission is at 5pm on normal days and 9pm on Thursdays. The museum is closed on Mondays, 1 May and 25 December. Visitors with timed tickets use Entrance 1 on the quay, while those without tickets and priority visitors use Entrance 2 on the forecourt. The museum is undergoing major renovation work, so check access conditions before you go. For food, there is a restaurant, Café Campana on the fifth floor and Café de la Gare beneath the nave. Allow two to three hours.

The museum has its own RER C station, Musée d'Orsay, and Solférino on metro line 12 is a short walk away. The Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor footbridge crosses the Seine to the Tuileries Garden and the Musée de l'Orangerie, which makes a natural pairing for a day of Impressionist painting.