Musée d'Orsay
Van Gogh and Monet hung inside a Beaux-Arts station built for the Paris–Orléans railway.
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The world's largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art — 86 Monets, 81 Renoirs, 56 Cézannes — mostly French work from 1848 to 1914 (plus France-based foreigners like the Dutch van Gogh), inside a station built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, its central nave running the length of the old train platforms.
What to look for
- Victor Laloux's clock in the main hall — by the station's own architect, so it predates the 1986 museum.
- The central nave lined with sculpture — the museum's spine, once the station's platform hall.
- Manet's Olympia and van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhône among the headline canvases.
France's second-most-visited art museum after the Louvre (3.9M visitors in 2023) — go early.
Musée d'Orsay is one of 39 sights worth the detour in Paris, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Paris pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Paris
- Eiffel TowerThe 300-metre iron tower Parisian artists petitioned against before it was even finished.
- Louvre MuseumThe world's most-visited museum lives inside a 12th-century fortress that became a royal palace.
- Notre-Dame de ParisThe spire fell on live TV in April 2019; since December 2024 you can walk back inside.
- Champs-ÉlyséesA single 1.9-km straight line runs from the Concorde obelisk to the Arc de Triomphe — Paris's ceremonial spine on the Axe historique.
- Place de la BastilleThe prison that lit a revolution is gone — and the mob that stormed it on 14 July 1789 came for gunpowder, not the seven forgotten men inside.
- Arc de TriompheNapoleon ordered it after Austerlitz in 1806; twelve avenues still radiate from the star-shaped square around it.