Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Built for the Paris Exhibition of 1900 (architect Victor Laloux) on the banks of the Seine opposite the Tuileries, the Gare d'Orsay, the former railroad station which now houses the Musée d'Orsay, is a huge glass and iron construction topped by a glass dome and surrounded on three sides by the palatial facades of the Hôtel d'Orsay. Passengers entering the spacious entrance hall could not see the platforms from which trains left for southwestern France, for the railroad tracks were several meters lower.

Picture - The Musée d'Orsay in Paris at night.

Picture - The sculpture gallery in the central hall of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Picture - Antique clock at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Picture - Old clock at the Musée d'Orsay.

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Musee d'Orsay Map

Important Information:

Official site: www.musee-orsay.fr

Address: 1 rue de la Légion d'Honneur, F-75007 Paris, France

Opening hours: 9:30am-6pm; Thu: 9:30am-9:45pm; Closed: Mon

Always closed on: New Year's Day (Jan 1), May Day / Labor Day (May 1), Christmas - Christian (Dec 25)

Entrance fee in EUR: Adult €7.50, Concession or reduced rate €5.50, Child 18 & under FREE

Useful tips: Group visit and guide tour reserve one month in advance. Documentation in foreign languages available. No flash photography.

Discount: Sunday

Disability Access: Full facilities for persons with disabilities.

Guides: Guided tour included with admission.

Facilities: Gift shop, Restaurant or food service, Wheelchair loan or rental

Transit: Metro: Solferino; RER: Musee d'Orsay; Bus: 24, 63, 68, 69, 73, 83, 84, 94.

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As engines became more powerful, however, and were able to pull more coaches the platforms of the Gare d'Orsay proved to be too short. In 1939 the station ceased to handle long-distance traffic and was confined to local trains, and finally it lost even this function to the RER. In 1973 the station and the hotel were scheduled as national monuments, and plans were developed for converting them to a museum. The reconstruction was carried out under the direction of Pierre Colboc, Renaud Bardon and Jean-Paul Philippon; Gae Aulenti was responsible for the interior.

The Musée d'Orsay opened its doors in 1986, with 17,200sq.m/180,000sq.ft of display space for the art of the period from 1848 to 1916. The exhibits are arranged chronologically according to broad themes and artistic techniques (including music and literature). Within the various schools the works of particular artists are so far as possible displayed together: for example there are rooms for Daumier, Courbet and van Gogh, a courtyard for Carpeaux, a terrace for Rodin. Only in the former ballroom are the sculpture and pictures selected for their appropriateness to the turn-of-the-century Rococo decor.

Contemporary events and intellectual movements forming the background to the works displayed are documented in separate rooms (French history, the press, tables of dates).

The entrance to the former Hôtel d'Orsay, on the west side of the building, leads into the reception area, with bookshops and a café. The area formerly occupied by platforms, on a lower level, is now a sculpture gallery, on either side of which, at ground floor level, are rooms devoted to painting, photography and architecture.

The glass dome of the station is still visible above the central hall (138m/150yds long, 40m/44yds wide, 32m/105ft high), but the various floors of the hotel and the station concourse have been converted into exhibition rooms.

Admirers of the Second Empire will find on the ground floor sculpture by the "Florentines", for example Ernest Christophe's "Comédie Humaine", which inspired Baudelaire's poem "Le Masque" in the "Fleurs du Mal". The fashion for polychrome sculpture and the taste for Orientalism during this period are reflected, for example, in Charles Cordier's "Nègre du Soudan".

Musee d'Orsay Highlight

Impressionists

The celebrated collection of Impressionist works formerly in the Jeu de Paume is now in the Musée d'Orsay. All the great masters of the Impressionist movement, which marked the emergence of the modern school in painting between 1870 and 1900, are represented in the upper gallery - Edouard Manet with his famous "Déjeuner sur l'Herbe", the "historic" masterpiece of the collection, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas - as are the Post-Impressionists Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne, the Pointillistes George Seurat and Paul Signac, and the unclassifiable work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Salon painting is represented by, among others, Cabanel and Bouguereau (ground floor), and Naturalist painting is on the middle level, as are the Symbolists, including Edward Burne-Jones. Works by Octave Tassaert and Gustave Courbet are characteristic of the plastic painting of the Realist school.

After the sculpture of Maillol and Rodin and the towers displaying the work of the international Art Nouveau school (including furniture by Hector Guimard and Henry van der Velde and glass and enamel work by Emile Gallé) the visit ends with the section on "Sources of the 20th Century" and the beginnings of film. The photographic collection contains some 10,000 items, from the daguerreotype (1839) to the end of the First World War, including examples of work by Félix Nadar, Clarence White and Gustave Le Gray.

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