Paris, economic, political and cultural lung of France, is a multicultural city, loaded with art and history: it is therefore to say that there is a plethora of museums to visit in Paris. With 2.2 million intramural inhabitants - and 12.5 million people throughout the Ile-de-France region - it is the largest urban area in Europe after Moscow, Istanbul and London. . In addition, Paris attracts nearly 32 million visitors a year, making it one of the most visited capitals in the world. To facilitate your museum marathon to visit in Paris, we therefore advise you to opt for the Paris Museum Pass .
An influential city from the Gallo-Roman era, Paris is “the City of Light” to visit, the “museum city” not to be missed, an incredible concentrate of culture where each street, each building, each plot of land has a busy history. of artistic and cultural symbols. Paris is indeed present in all the arts: literature, popular songs, music, theater, cinema, architecture, sculpture, painting, photography, etc. The result is an abysmal amount of museums to visit in Paris, of which we give you a brief presentation.
1. The Louvre Museum
With more than 460,000 timeless works from Antiquity to the present day, the Louvre Museum is one of the largest art and history museums in the world. You will discover there world famous works, such as Mona Lisa, La Venus de Milo, the Raft of the Medusa, Liberty guiding the people, La mort de la Vierge, La Dentellière, Le Sacre de Napoléon, the Portrait of Louis XIV in coronation costume, etc.
2. The Musée d'Orsay
Museum of Western arts of contemporary times spanning from 1848 to 1914, you will have access to an incredible diversity of works of art at the Musée d'Orsay: paintings, sculptures, architecture, photographs, graphic and decorative arts. We contemplate, among others: Les Glaneuses (Millet), Le Bal du moulin de la Galette (Renoir), Self-portrait (V. v. Gogh), Card players (Cézanne), Floor planers (Caillebotte), Les poppies (Monet), etc.
3. The Georges Pompidou Center
Designed by French President G. Pompidou (1911-1974), the building - also called Beaubourg - houses the largest collection of contemporary art in Europe. There is also a very large number of major works of modern art at the Center Pompidou.
4. The Quai Branly Museum
This museum houses a very dense permanent collection dedicated to the arts of non-Western civilizations (Americas, Oceania, Asia and Africa). The works of all the communities of the world are exposed there. Essential museums to visit in Paris, we discover at the Quai Branly museum the cultural specificities and the history of each continent.
5. The Grand Palace
Built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900, it was built for the glory of French art, which became a historic monument in 2000. The Grand Palais presents four temporary exhibitions a year.
6. The Petit Palais
A veritable museum of Fine Arts in Paris, 1,300 works are on display there (sculptures, paintings, tapestries, works of art), from the ancient and medieval period to the 19th century, including the French, Italian, Flemish and Dutch Renaissance. Delacroix, Monet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, are exposed there.
7. Palace of Discovery
This museum is dedicated to all sciences with an emphasis on the presentation of experiences in a fun and interactive way: astronomy, biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics, earth sciences, one of the inevitable on the list of museums to visit in Paris, for adults and children.
8. The City of Science and Industry
Famous museum of the Parc de la Villette, it is a vast complex dedicated to the discovery of science, with experimental protocols: educational and fun, in a popularization approach for the little ones.
9. The National Museum of Natural History
With the Great Gallery of Evolution, we contemplate the skeletons and stuffed representations at real size of extinct or endangered species: dinosaurs, raptors or mammoths sit enthroned peacefully to make us feel very small. Animals from 5 continents, from Prehistory to today.
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10. The Museum of Arts and Crafts
Since 1819, the museum has housed a vast collection of all kinds of inventions: astrolabes, celestial spheres, barometers, clocks and calculating instruments, machine models, cinematograph (Lumière brothers), Clément Ader's steam plane, the monoplane of Louis Blériot, etc.
11. The Picasso Museum
Inside the Picasso Museum, access the largest collection of Pablo Picasso's works in the world. In this important building among the museums to visit in Paris, you will explore La Célestine , La Suppliante or the Portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter , between cubism and strabismus of the famous artist.
12. The Montmartre Museum
The objective of the Montmartre Museum is to explain in painting how the Butte Montmartre became what it is today: great artists stayed there - such as A. Renoir -, the opportunity to relive important parts of Paris' history such as the Paris Commune (1871), for example, and of which the Butte Montmartre - a small charming village in Paris - was the epicenter
13. The National Museum of Asian Arts (Guimet Museum)
This museum exhibits one of the largest collections of Asian art in the world: Khmer works from Southeast Asia, Buddha collections, Chinese art rooms dedicated to Pakistan, Tibet, Nepal or Japan and to Korea.
14. The Orangerie Museum
Temple of Impressionist art, the Musée de l'Orangerie houses a collection of paintings by world famous artists, such as Monet, Renoir, Matisse or Picasso, Modigliani, Cézanne, etc. A timeless journey that takes you from the 19th century to the start of the 20th century.
15. The Museum of Modern Art
Permanent exhibitions of works from the 20th century, discovering the great pictorial movements that crossed this period, there are also less known artists than those exhibited at the Beaubourg center. Temporary exhibitions give pride of place to international contemporary art.
16. The Museum of the Middle Ages
An unusual museum, dedicated to medieval art, which catapults the visitor through 15 centuries of French and European art history. In the Hôtel de Cluny, there is also the Arènes de Lutèce, the only Gallo-Roman vestige of Paris: the Thermes de Cluny. It is one of the most important collections of medieval art in the world, representing Gothic and Romanesque art.
17. The Museum of Decorative Arts
The museum highlights the evolution of techniques throughout history, exhibiting a collection of 150,000 works ranging from the art of wood to ceramics and glass. A temple for all lovers of antique furniture, modern architecture and art deco.
18. The Museum of Architecture and Heritage
This museum in the heart of Paris reveals the major French architectural movements from the Middle Ages to the present day. One of the essential museums to visit in Paris exhibits gigantic reconstructions of religious and civil buildings at full size. Murals, stained glass windows, church portals, a journey through the corridors of time.
19. The Rodin Museum
Formerly the workshop of the great sculptor, this imposing 18th century residence in which the Rodin Museum is located is one of the most beautiful museums in Paris and contains more than 7,000 Rodin sculptures, including his great masterpieces Le penseur , Le baiser , Les bourgeois de Calais and La Porte de l'Enfer , alongside 8000 drawings and gouaches by the artist.
20. The Louis Vuitton Foundation
Rising above the Bois de Boulogne like a magnificent vessel with wavy crystal sails, the Louis Vuitton Foundation designed by the architect Frank Gehry, has been the most captivating on the Parisian horizon since the unveiling of the Pompidou Center in 1977.