Paris, France is the most-visited city in the world, with the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, Louvre Museum, and many more famous tourist attractions. The amount of history-related objects housed in this city is absolutely astounding, and some of them should make it to your bucket list. There is a plethora of museums in the city, and we have sifted through them all to pick out the ones we feel you can’t miss during your time in the city. Don’t blame us if you get lost in its romance and never want to go home.
Louvre Museum
One of the world’s most visited museums, you have to start your museum tour with Musée du Louvre. The building dates to the 12th century, while the museum itself was originally opened in the mid 1790s. There are almost 400,000 objects in the museum, with 35,000 works of art, which means you could spend days looking around and still not see everything. One of the most well-known artworks housed here is Mona Lisa (La Joconde), painted in the early 1500s by Leonardo da Vinci.
Louvre Museum is right on the River Seine and a great place from which to start your search for a hotel in Paris. The most famous attractions in the city surround you, and the scene can’t be beat.
Petit Palais
Petit Palais houses the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts, constructed at the turn of the 20th century. The featured show here is the History of French Art from 1800 to 1900, which includes many stages of growth. The inner gallery houses ivory, tapestries, metal works, jewelry, and porcelain. These pieces of art are from collections around the country. Among the artists whose work appears in the museum are Delacroix, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, and Rodin.
You will find museums all over the city, and a city tour would be a good way to get a lay of the land. There are many available, some even have stops at the Eiffel Tower, another must-see while in Paris.
Musée du quai Branly
If you want a whole world experience, head over to this museum, which features art and cultural objects from around the world. There are over 450,000 objects in the museum’s collection, with 3,500 on display at any one time. This means you can visit Musée de quai Branly over and over and never get bored. The exhibits feature works from the indigenous people of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.
Musée d’Orsay
Paris is known to many internationally as a center for artwork, which is why so many art museums have made it on this list. Musée d’Orsay is no exception. Housed in a former railway station constructed in the late 1800s, this museum houses mostly French art which includes paintings, photography, sculptures, and furniture. Some highlighted artists include Monet, Degas, Renoir, and Van Gogh, all of whose creations are all part of the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art paintings and sculpture in the world.