Les Musées de Paris

La Muséophile’s current favourites from the world of unique, charming, lesser-known Paris museums.

1. Le Musée de l’Orangerie: simple, circular white rooms in which Claude Monet’s waterlilies surround you on all sides.
2. Le Musée national Gustave Moreau: brooding, often-unfinished Symbolist paintings in Gustave Moreau’s home and studio, with one of the most striking staircases in Paris.
3. Le Musée Bourdelle: expressive sculpture in Antoine Bourdelle’s Montparnasse studio, galleries and tranquil garden.
4. Le Musée Nissim de Camondo: intricate 17th-century decorative arts in a collector’s decadent, Versailles-style home.
5. Le Musée Jacquemart-André: opulent, art-filled 19th-century mansion in its original state.
6. Le Palais de Tokyo: avant-garde contemporary art space in the Trocadéro area of the 16th arrondissement.
7. Le Musée Curie: Marie and Pierre Curie’s Paris laboratory-turned-museum near the Panthéon (where Marie is entombed).
8. Le Musée national Eugène Delacroix: Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix’s more intimate works in his former residence and studio, near Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
9. Le Musée Rodin: sculptor Auguste Rodin’s flowing, rough-hewn works in a mansion and open-air museum garden near Invalides.
10. Le Musée des Arts et Métiers: industrial design museum with an eclectic collection telling the history of science, craft and invention in France.