Musée d’Orsay

The long central hall at Musée d'Orsay still makes sense as a railway station. Its great span, light and monumental scale belong to the building opened for the 1900 Universal Exhibition, while sculpture now occupies the space where the station once worked. The architecture is therefore part of the museum's subject as well as its setting.

Painting and sculpture from 1848 to 1914

The collections cover Western art from 1848 to 1914, a period in which painting, sculpture, photography, architecture and decorative arts changed profoundly. Impressionism is the best-known attraction, but the museum's range makes the movement easier to understand beside the work that preceded and followed it. The visit is broader than a sequence of familiar paintings.

Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas and Cézanne are central names, with Post-Impressionist works by artists including Gauguin and Van Gogh extending the story. Sculpture brings another way of looking, particularly in relation to the large hall and the changing viewpoints along its galleries. Decorative objects and photographs add the material and visual culture surrounding the paintings.

Choosing a route through the former station

A focused visit can follow one of those interests rather than attempting every room. The building rewards that approach because the large spaces and more enclosed galleries offer different conditions for looking. Moving between them makes the former station's structure continually visible, even when attention is on the collection.

The upper parts of the museum add views through the station's clocks and a different perspective on the Seine-side building. Temporary exhibitions bring more specific subjects into the programme, but the permanent collection and the surviving station architecture are already a substantial reason to come. Orsay's particular strength is the relationship between the two: the art of a rapidly changing era housed in one of that era's ambitious public buildings.