The Louvre is magnificent and the Mona Lisa is small, distant, and mobbed. There is a better way to spend a cultural day in Paris, and it involves the city’s quieter museums — house-museums, single-artist collections, and civic galleries where the guard outnumbers the visitors.
The permanent collections of the City of Paris municipal museums, managed by Paris Musées, are free to enter. [1]
Where to go instead
- Musée Rodin — sculpture in a mansion garden, best on a warm afternoon.
- Musée de l’Orangerie — Monet’s Water Lilies wrapping two oval rooms.
- Musée Jacquemart-André — a private collection in a Belle Époque townhouse.
- Musée Carnavalet — the story of Paris itself, and free to enter.
You do not need the biggest museum in the world. You need the one where you can hear yourself think.
— Camille Laurent
Make a day of it
Pair two small museums with a long café lunch in between and you have a perfect, unhurried Paris day. Explore more in our culture collection.
Where to Eat
A day of museum-hopping deserves a proper meal on either end. Here are seven, from decades-old bistros to the newest tables in town.
