Paris Museums

Paris is the capital and largest city of France. Paris is one of Europe’s major centers of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts.

Paris has many prestigious cultural institutions. The Louvre museum is one of the most visited in the world. The Musée d’Orsay is noted for its collection of French Impressionist art.

The Pompidou-center’s Musée National d’Art Moderne has one of the largest selections of modern and contemporary art in Europe.

The central area of the city along the Seine River is classified as a UNESCO Heritage Site.

It includes many notable monuments, including Notre Dame Cathedral, the Sainte-Chapelle, the former Universal Exposition Grand Palais, Petit Palais, and Eiffel Tower and the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre.

A Virtual Tour of Museums and Historic Sites in Paris

The Louvre
Musée National du Moyen Age – Thermes De Cluny (National Museum of Medieval Art)
Musée d’Orsay
Musée Rodin
Musée Carnavalet
National Archaeological Museum, France
Les Invalides
Musée Marmottan Monet
Guimet Museum
Napoleon’s Tomb

Parisian Museums

City: Paris
Country: France
Population: 12 million Metro
Origins of Name: Derived from its early inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe

Highlights of Museums in Paris

The Louvre

Musée du Louvre is one of the world’s largest museums and a historic monument in Paris, France. A central landmark of the city, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine.

Its collection is nearly 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 72,735 square meters (782,910 square feet). The Louvre is one of the world’s most visited museum with over 7 million visitors.

Musée National du Moyen Age – Thermes De Cluny (National Museum of Medieval Art)

Musée National du Moyen Age – Thermes de Cluny in Paris is the National Museum of the Middle Ages. It also is known as Musée de Cluny.

The Musée National du Moyen Age is housed in one of the oldest buildings in Paris, a former mansion whose construction started in 1334.

The mansion was integrated into and built on the site of the ruins of ancient Gallo-Roman thermal baths.

The museum is best known for the beautiful “Lady and the Unicorn” tapestry, and it also has impressive collections of medieval sculpture and arts.

Musée d’Orsay

Musée d’Orsay is housed in a magnificent train station building, which is a historic site constructed for the 1900 World Fair.

The Orsay is an internationally renowned art museum with a rich collection of Impressionist art and specializes in displaying artistic creations from 1848 to 1914.

Musée Rodin

The Musée Rodin is a museum dedicated to the works of the sculptor Auguste Rodin.

It has two separate sites, the Hôtel Biron and surrounding grounds in central Paris plus outside Paris at Rodin’s old home, the Villa des Brillants at Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine.

Musée Carnavalet

The Musée Carnavalet is dedicated to the history of the city of Paris. The museum occupies two mansions, the Hôtel Carnavalet and the former Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau.

The museum opened to the public in 1880 and is one of the 14 City of Paris’ Museums that have been incorporated into Paris Musées.

National Archaeological Museum, France

The Musée d’Archéologie Nationale is the French National Archaeology Museum, covering pre-historic times to the Merovingian period.

It is located in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Yvelines, about 19 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris. The museum houses nearly 3 million archaeological objects, of which about 30,000 are exhibited.

These finds, discovered on the French territory, are presented by chronological periods: Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman period (Roman Gaul), and the first Middle Ages (Merovingian Gaul).

A collection of foreign archaeological and ethnological objects are presented in the comparative archaeology room.

Les Invalides

Les Invalides formally the Hôtel national des Invalides (The National Residence of the Invalids).

This complex in Paris contains numerous museums and monuments. They all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the building’s original purpose.

The Les Invalides complex houses: Musée de l’Armée, the military museum of the Army of France, Musée des Plans-Reliefs, Musée d’Histoire Contemporaine,

The Cathedral of Saint-Louis des Invalides, Dôme des Invalides, a large church, the tallest in Paris, and Tomb of Napoleon.

Musée Marmottan Monet

Musée Marmottan Monet houses over three hundred Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Claude Monet.

The Museum’s most significant collection is the result of a donation in 1966 by Michel Monet, Claude’s second son and only heir.

Originally a hunting lodge for the Duke of Valmy, the house was purchased by Jules Marmottan in 1882, who later left it to his son. Paul Marmottan eventually bequeathed his home and collection to the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Quotes About Paris

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“A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.”
– Thomas Jefferson

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“Secrets travel fast in Paris.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

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“London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.”
– G. K. Chesterson

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“To know Paris is to know a great deal.”
– Henry Miller

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“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
– Ernest Hemingway

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“Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards, and ancient winding medieval streets – as vast and indestructible as nature itself.”
– Anne Rice

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“When spring comes to Paris, the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.”
– Henry Miller

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“A final reminder. Whenever you are in Paris at twilight in the early summer, return to the Seine and watch the evening sky close slowly on a last strand of daylight fading quietly, like a sigh.”
– Kate Simon

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“America is my country and Paris is my hometown.”
– Gertrude Stein

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“The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older – intelligence and good manners.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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“What an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world!”
– Charles Dickens

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“In Paris, they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”
– Mark Twain

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“To know Paris is to know a great deal.”
– Henry Miller

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“Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art.”
– Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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“The chief danger about Paris is that it is such a strong stimulant.”
– T.S. Eliot

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“There is but one Paris, and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even – the French air clears up the brain and does good – a world of good.”
– Vincent Willem van Gogh

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“You can’t escape the past in Paris, and yet what’s so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn’t seem to burden.”
– Allen Ginsberg

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“Coming to Paris has been a wonderful experience, surprising in many respects, one of them being to find how much of an American I am.”
– Augustus Saint-Gaudens

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“I like Frenchmen very much because even when they insult you, they do it so nicely.”
– Josephine Baker

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“Paris… is a world meant for the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich detail.”
– Edmund White

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“When good Americans die, they go to Paris.”
– Oscar Wilde

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The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay. I heard the laughter of her heart in every street café.”
– Oscar Hammerstein

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“London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.”
– G. K. Chesterson

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“Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.”
– Honoré de Balzac