Musée de l'Orangerie

- Nestled in the west corner of the Tuileries Gardens beside the Place de la Concorde, the Orangerie’s graceful, sunlit rooms make it an ideal stop between a morning stroll along the Seine and an afternoon café; its central Paris location means you can easily pair the visit with nearby sights and still have time to wander the gardens afterward. - The museum’s heart is Claude Monet’s monumental series of eight Water Lilies murals, arranged to envelop you in a near-360-degree, almost meditative landscape—standing before these canvases feels less like looking at paintings and more like being invited into a living, breathing garden of color and reflection. - Beyond Monet, the Orangerie showcases a vibrant cross-section of late 19th- and early 20th-century art, with striking works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Alfred Sisley, Chaim Soutine, and Maurice Utrillo, giving you a concentrated dose of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and School of Paris highlights in one compact, walkable experience. - A recent reconfiguration of the galleries was designed to bring Monet’s Water Lilies and the École de Paris into a more meaningful conversation with each other, creating an elegant, fluid route that feels both educational and emotionally resonant—each room builds on the last so the whole visit reads like a carefully curated story. - At the very entrance you’ll encounter large-scale polyptychs by Joan Mitchell (on loan from the Musée national d’Art moderne) alongside powerful, monumental works by the so-called modern “primitives” such as Picasso, Douanier Rousseau, Derain, Modigliani, and Matisse—an immediate visual punch that sets the tone for the rest of the collection. - The museum’s monographic galleries give you the luxury of close, contemplative viewing; without the crush of large tour groups, you can step in, slow down, and really study brushwork, composition and color relationships as if the artists had left their studios just moments ago.