Top Five Art Museums to Visit in Paris Paris has been a major cultural center for centuries, so it’s no wonder why many tourists make plans to visit the City of Light during their travels. It’s not uncommon for river cruise vacationers to schedule a stop at one or more of the many world-renowned art museums that dot the city. With all the cultural riches on display, however, it can be difficult to decide which museums to visit—especially if there’s only a limited window of time available for these activities during a river cruise vacation. To help you choose, here’s our admittedly subjective— but reasonably well-informed, we hope—list of the top five art museums in Paris. Louvre Museum The Louvre, as it is often called, is beyond all doubt the most popular museum in the world, attracting millions of guests from across the globe. Not even the British Museum (London) or the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) can match the popularity of this museum, whose name has become a common pop-culture reference. So what accounts for the esteem that the Louvre enjoys? The Louvre’s vast collection of artwork is unparalleled: The famed Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo are both on display, but you can also see thousands of Islamic artworks from the Middle Ages, as well as an even larger number of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities. Additional treasures on view include pieces by big names such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Titian; you can also examine historically important artifacts such as Louis XIV’s coronation crown. The Louvre doesn’t just display the history of art—it is part of that history, having opened to the public way back in 1793. Musée d’Orsay The Musée d’Orsay routinely comes in second after the Louvre in discussions about Paris art museums, and some commentators prefer it to its far more famous cousin. The Musée d’Orsay, noted for its striking glass arch, owes its unusual appearance to the building’s past life as a railway station. Here you’ll find a large collection of impressionist and post-impressionist works from luminaries such as van Gogh, Cézanne, Degas, and Gauguin; you can also view a number of notable sculptures (including ones from Rodin and Carpeaux), photographs, and decorative artworks. Petit Palais Situated near the famed Champs-Elysées, the Petit Palais displays a wide range of artworks from the Classical era, the Renaissance, and the 19th century, as well as various pieces of Christianthemed art. Name artists represented at the Petit Palais include Monet, Cézanne, Carpeaux, Delacroix, Ingres, and Dalou. Though its holdings are not nearly as extensive as the Louvre’s, this museum has a lot of offer—and budget-conscious tourists will be pleased to hear that its permanent collections can be viewed free of charge. This attractively constructed trapezium-
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.