See & do · Museums
Musée de l'Orangerie
Opening hours
- Monday: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
- Tuesday: Closed
- Wednesday: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
- Thursday: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
- Friday: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
- Saturday: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
- Sunday: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Images provided by Google Places
Museum with 20th-century European art collection, showcasing 8 of Monet's water lilies murals.via Google
A quiet museum in the Tuileries Gardens featuring two custom-built oval rooms designed by Claude Monet to house his massive Water Lilies murals.
- Good to know
- €€; a small, focused museum that can easily be visited in under two hours.
Reviews from Google
So glad to be able to finally experience the water lilies in all of their glory. I didn’t even know they were such large format paintings with their own building like this. I’m very glad we added it to our schedule. We are surprised by the amount of paintings downstairs, which was nice, but the main attraction was to take time in the two main waterlily rooms. I do wish we had taken a bit more research to figure out when there might be a few less people there. Perhaps at the start of the day or right at the end. The rooms are laid out to be meditative but with so many visitors, you have to wade through the selfie takers to enjoy the paintings.
Besides the Lili pads painting in the reflection room, there’s not much else to see in my opinion. For better picture experience, go to the second room as most people only stop in the first room. Also, highly recommend you get tickets in advance. If you don’t have tickets you might be waiting for a while to enter.
The museum is perfect, I absolutely adore Monet's paintings and the way they are displayed! We went in quite early after they opened and waited for about an hour and 15 minutes to be let in (we bought the tickets at the museum) but I feel they don't let too many people in at once - and that definitely helps the visitors having the best experience inside. I hate art museums where you don't even get to see the pictures because of too many people being let inside. We had plenty of space and were able to take nice pictures too!! The lower part of the museum was quite crowded around midday, but also worth a visit.
Must reserve ticket 2 weeks ahead, although you can queue up for a ticket on the spot but it would be like quite a long time. Although there is crowd control, quite crowded indeed. Monet's water lilies are so great. Please be quiet and we all can enjoy the paintings as what Monet wanted. The seasonal exhibition on Henri Rousseau is interesting. Perm exhibition of Walter Guillaume is great as well.
Of course it's a nice museum. But if you could choose only one, I would go for Musee D'Orsay before this one. It is a wonderful museum but the impressionist's collection at the Orsay is better, in my opinion. Good if you like Monet, Picasso, Matisse and Renoir. The staff at the entrance of the museum was not friendly, specially at the scanner and metal detector. But ok. The building is beautiful. There is a family space with kids activities. Nice.