Musée de l’Orangerie

Located in the Tuileries Garden near Place de la Concorde, the Musée de l’Orangerie is renowned for its collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, including Claude Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’ murals. The museum also features works by artists such as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Alfred Sisley, Chaïm Soutine, and Maurice Utrillo. Visitors can explore these masterpieces in a serene setting, with services like guided tours and audio guides available to enhance the experience.

Planning your visit

The Orangerie exists for eight paintings. Monet's Water Lilies murals fill two oval rooms built to his own specification — natural overhead light, curved walls, no corners — so the paintings wrap continuously around the viewer. He donated them to France the day after the Armistice in 1918. Downstairs, the Walter-Guillaume collection adds Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse, Modigliani, Soutine and Picasso, making this a compact, high-density visit rather than a marathon.

Its size is the practical point: this is a one to two hour museum in the Tuileries, easy to combine with something else. Bookable options include fast-track tickets that skip the queue at the Concorde end of the gardens, Monet-focused guided tours that explain how the oval rooms were designed and why, two-hour private guided tours, and skip-the-line private formats. Several combine the museum with a Tuileries garden walk or a Seine river cruise, and 24-hour river passes bundle both. See current dates below.