Paris · 7th arrondissement
Musée d'Orsay
A Beaux-Arts railway station holding the world's best collection of impressionism
The fifth floor, where the impressionists hang behind the clock face
Built for the 1900 world exhibition and made obsolete by longer trains, the Gare d'Orsay was nearly demolished before being converted into a museum for the period between 1848 and 1914. The nave is left open, which gives the sculpture a light no purpose-built museum achieves.
The impressionist and post-impressionist rooms upstairs are the point: Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh and Cézanne in a concentration that exists nowhere else, arranged at a scale you can actually finish in one visit.
The detail
Good to know
- Building
- Gare d'Orsay, 1900
- Museum since
- 1986
- Period covered
- 1848 to 1914
- Late night
- Thursday until 21:45
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