Musee d'Orsay

From Paris Hotels Reviews

Musee d'Orsay

As it penetrates the 7e arrondissement, boulevard St-Germain swings up towards the river disgorging its traffic across the Pont de la Concorde onto the Right Bank. On the east side of this wedge of the city are the expensive art and antiques shops of the Carré Rive Gauche, between rue de l'Université and the Quai Voltaire. To the west, facing the Tuileries gardens acoss the river, is the Musée d'Orsay, with its entrance on rue de la Légion de l'Honneur (Tues, Wed, Fri & Sat 9.30am-6pm, Thurs 9.30-9.45pm, Sun 9am-6pm; €7.50, free to under-18s and on first Sun of the month; www.musee-orsay.fr; M° Solférino/RER Musée-d'Orsay). The museum's collection of the electrifying works of the Impressionists and post-Impressionist has made it one of Paris's most-visited attractions. There's more to it than just Monet and Renoir, however. The collection covers the artistically revolutionary era between 1848 and 1914 – between the end of the Louvre's Classical traditions and the start of the modern era, as represented in the Pompidou Centre.

The building itself was inaugurated as a railway station for the 1900 World Fair. It spans the worlds of nineteenth-century Classicism and industrial modernity brilliantly, its elegant, formal stone facade cunningly disguising the steel-and-glass construction of the railway arch within. It continued to serve the stations of southwest France until 1939, but its platforms became too short for postwar trains and it fell into disuse. De Gaulle made it the backdrop for the announcement of his coup d'état of May 19, 1958, but such was the site's degradation by the 1960s that Orson Wellers thought it the perfect location for his film of Kafka's The Trial, filling the high, narrow corridors with filing cabinets to create a nightmarishly claustrophobic setting. Despite this illustrious history, the station was only saved from destruction by the backlash of public opinion that followed the demolition of Les Halles. The job of redesigning the interior as a museum was given, in 1986, to the fashionable Milanese architect Gae Aulenti. Hers is a considered, beautiful design with one major drawback: the Impressionist section is crammed under the roof, putting the biggest crowds in the most cramped area,

Taken at an easy pace, you could easily spend half day, if not a whole one, meandering through the rooms in their numbered, chronological order, but the layout makes it easy to confine your visit to a specific section, each of which has a very distinctive atmosphere. The collection begins on the ground floor, under the huge vault of steel and glass, then continues up to the attics of the upper level, before ending with the terraces of the middle level, overlooking the main chamber.

The café on the upper level of museum – with its summer terrace and wonderful view of Montmartre through the giant railway clock – and the resplendently gilded restaurant and tea room on the middle level, are great spots to recuperate. Tea and cake will set you back around €10.