Paris · Jardin des Tuileries, 1st arrondissement
One of the rare museums where the work, the rooms, and the building form a single composition.
Before you go
Choose your date before visiting the Musée de l’Orangerie. The museum recommends booking a timed ticket, including for free admission. Check the official schedule for exceptional closures.
Book official tickets€12.50 online, €11 at the museum; combined Orsay–Orangerie ticket €20
Free admission
Allow 60–90 minutes (our guidance, not an official figure).
Fridays until 9 p.m. during exhibition periods; reduced admission after 6 p.m.
The collection
One of the two oval rooms, 2017. The canvases curve with the walls and the light falls from the diffusing skylight Monet specified.
Claude Monet
Eight compositions around two oval rooms, installed in 1927 to Monet's design. Shown: one of the two rooms.[1]
Amedeo Modigliani, Paul Guillaume, Novo Pilota, 1915 (Musée de l'Orangerie) — the dealer at twenty-three, painted by the artist he was among the first to sell.
Amedeo Modigliani (Musée de l'Orangerie), via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Amedeo Modigliani
The dealer at twenty-three, painted by the artist he was among the first to sell.[2]
Chaïm Soutine, Le Petit Pâtissier, 1922–1923 (Musée de l'Orangerie) — from Paul Guillaume's holdings, the museum's Soutine group.
Chaïm Soutine (Musée de l'Orangerie), via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Chaïm Soutine
One of the museum's Soutines from Guillaume's holdings, the largest group in France. Painted 1922–1923.[3]
Paul Cézanne, Pommes et biscuits, c. 1880 (Musée de l'Orangerie). Photograph by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra.
Paul Cézanne; photograph Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Paul Cézanne
A quiet Cézanne still life, c. 1880, from the collection's nineteenth-century root.[3]
Henri Rousseau, La Carriole du père Junier, 1908 (Musée de l'Orangerie) — a painting Paul Guillaume prized.
Henri Rousseau (Musée de l'Orangerie), via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Henri Rousseau
Rousseau at his most deadpan, a painting Guillaume prized. Its French title is La Carriole du père Junier.[3]
Marie Laurencin
The portrait Chanel commissioned and refused to buy; Laurencin kept it.[3]
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Marie Laurencin
The small portrait of her poet, bought at auction in 2019 — the museum's sixth Laurencin.[3]
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Pablo Picasso
The monumental nude of the return to order, acquired by Guillaume after 1930.[3]
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André Derain
The dealer in his favorite blue, by the collection's most numerous painter.[3]
Explore the workBehind the collection
The museum of Monet's Water Lilies — two oval rooms he helped design — with the Walter-Guillaume collection of early modern Paris beneath them.
At the western end of the Tuileries, beside the Place de la Concorde, the Musée de l'Orangerie holds Claude Monet's Water Lilies in two oval rooms that he helped design. The paintings were not hung here; the rooms were built for them. Monet fixed the sequence of the eight compositions, the curve of the walls, and the diffused daylight falling from above, so that the paintings, the architecture, and the light work as one ensemble. It is the reason a visit here feels different from a visit to a gallery of pictures.[1]
The cycle came to France as a gift. The day after the Armistice of November 1918, Monet offered panels to the state through his old friend Georges Clemenceau, then prime minister. The donation was formalized in 1922, and Clemenceau pushed the project through the years of revision that followed, as Monet, his eyesight failing, kept enlarging and reworking the scheme. The rooms opened in May 1927, a few months after the painter's death. He never saw them finished.[1]
The building is older than the museum. It went up in 1852 as the orangery of the Tuileries palace, a long Second Empire shelter for the garden's orange trees, glazed on the Seine side to catch the winter sun. That southern glass is part of why Monet accepted the site. The conversion for the Water Lilies was drawn up by the architect Camille Lefèvre, working to Monet's specifications.[4][1]
Below the oval rooms sits a second museum. The dealer Paul Guillaume, a friend of Guillaume Apollinaire and one of the first Paris dealers to champion Modigliani and Soutine, assembled a collection that runs from Renoir and Cézanne to Picasso, Matisse, Rousseau, and the École de Paris. After his death in 1934 his widow, Domenica, reshaped the collection with her second husband, Jean Walter; the French state acquired it in stages in 1959 and 1963, and it has been shown at the Orangerie since the mid-1960s as the Walter-Guillaume collection.[3]
The two halves make the museum's argument. Upstairs, the end point of Impressionism at its most radical; downstairs, the dealers' Paris that carried painting from Renoir's generation to the moderns. The names in the lower rooms — Guillaume, Apollinaire, Modigliani, Soutine — are the same names that run through the cafés and studios of Montparnasse elsewhere in these pages.
A renovation between 2000 and 2006 stripped out a mezzanine added in the 1960s and restored the natural light Monet had specified. Since 2010 the museum has been administered jointly with the Musée d'Orsay across the river.[4]
The Orangerie is a concentrated museum rather than an encyclopedic one, and that is its practical appeal: the Water Lilies and the collection can be seen well in sixty to ninety minutes. Choose the Orsay first for the broad survey of nineteenth-century French painting; choose the Orangerie for Monet's ensemble and an intimate route through early modern Paris.
Orangerie des Tuileries · The place through time
The 1852 orangery of the Tuileries garden, converted to Monet's specifications and opened in 1927 as the museum of the Water Lilies.
The building went up in 1852 as a working orangery: a long shelter at the garden's western end where the Tuileries' orange trees overwintered, with a glazed south wall facing the Seine to catch the low sun. It served the palace until the palace burned in 1871, then passed through decades of mixed civic use.
When Claude Monet's gift of the Water Lilies needed a home, the orangery's site and its southern light recommended it. The architect Camille Lefèvre carried out the conversion to Monet's specifications between 1922 and 1927: two oval rooms in sequence, top-lit through diffusing skylights, the canvases curving with the walls. The rooms opened in May 1927.
A mezzanine inserted in the 1960s cut the rooms off from the sky for forty years. The renovation of 2000–2006 removed it, returning the daylight Monet had planned, and dug new galleries below for the Walter-Guillaume collection.
1852
The orangery is built to shelter the Tuileries garden's orange trees.[4]
1852
Built as the orangery of the Tuileries garden.
1918
The day after the Armistice, Monet offers panels to France through Clemenceau.[1]
1922
The donation is formalized and the Orangerie chosen as the site.[1]
1922
Conversion for the Water Lilies begins under Camille Lefèvre.
1927
The Water Lilies rooms open in May, months after Monet's death.[1]
1927
The Water Lilies rooms open in May.
1959–1963
The state acquires the Walter-Guillaume collection in stages.[3]
2000–2006
Renovation removes the 1960s mezzanine and restores natural light.[4]
2000–2006
Renovation removes the 1960s mezzanine and restores the skylights.
2010
The museum is joined administratively with the Musée d'Orsay.[4]
Artists, founders and collectors
Painter and donor
Gave the Water Lilies to France and fixed the design of the rooms that hold them.[1]
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Statesman
Monet's friend of forty years; carried the donation through to the rooms' opening.[1]
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Art dealer
Assembled the collection of the lower rooms, from Renoir to Soutine.[3]
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Collector
Reshaped Guillaume's collection and sold it to the state as the Walter-Guillaume ensemble.[3]
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Poet and critic
Guillaume's early mentor in the avant-garde; steered him toward the painters he backed.[2]
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Painter
Guillaume was among his first dealers; the collection holds his portrait of Guillaume, Novo Pilota.[2]
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Painter
The collection's most numerous painter: 31 canvases, including his 1919 portrait of Guillaume.[3]
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Painter
22 paintings — the largest Soutine collection in Europe, by the museum's own description.[3]
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Painter
Six works, including the portrait Chanel refused and the small Apollinaire bought at auction in 2019.[3]
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Painter
25 paintings, the collection's nineteenth-century core, favored by Domenica Walter.[3]
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Painter
15 works — the root the moderns grew from, in the museum's own telling.[3]
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Painter
Nine canvases, among them Old Junier's Cart, a painting Guillaume prized.[3]
Read moreIn photographs
Tuileries
Jardin des Tuileries, place de la Concorde (côté Seine), 75001 Paris
Concorde — lines 1, 8, 12
The museum lists itself as partially accessible; details on the official site
Check official access information
Open directionsExplore further
Picasso's monumental 1921 seated nude — Antiquity exaggerated rather than copied — the Walter-Guillaume collection's clearest statement of the postwar return to order.
Laurencin's small, frontal portrait of Apollinaire, painted around 1908 during their relationship and bought by the Orangerie at auction in 2019 — the painter's poet, hanging in the collection her dealer built.
Laurencin's 1923 portrait of Coco Chanel, commissioned by the couturière and refused by her; the painter kept the canvas, and it hangs today in the Orangerie's Walter-Guillaume rooms.
Derain's 1919 portrait of his dealer Paul Guillaume — elegant, detached, dressed in his favorite blue — painted by the artist whose 31 canvases now form the largest group in the Orangerie's collection.
Operated at · 1927
The museum opened in the converted Tuileries orangery in May 1927 and has occupied it since.
Founded by · 1918–1927
The museum in its present form exists to hold his gift: nineteen panels donated by the 1922 contract, installed as eight compositions in two oval rooms whose shape, spacing, and light he specified with the architect Camille Lefèvre.
Founded by · 1918–1927
Received Monet's Armistice-day offer, drove the donation to its 1922 contract, and carried the project through the painter's doubts and eye operations to the rooms' 1927 opening.
Displayed here · 1963
In the collection since the state's 1963 purchase; the museum's record places it in room 8, 'Les Arts à Paris.' Holdings rotate.
Displayed here · 2019
Bought at auction for the museum in November 2019; the record places it in room 10, level −2, beside the collection's other Laurencins. Holdings rotate.
Displayed here · 1977
In the Walter-Guillaume rooms since its 1977 physical entry; the museum's record places it in room 10, level −2. Holdings rotate.
Displayed here · 1959
In the Walter-Guillaume collection since the state's 1959 purchase. The museum's record lists no current room, so presence in the galleries at any given time is not asserted.
Worked here · 1922–1927
As architect of the 1922–1927 conversion, Lefèvre turned the Tuileries orangery into the museum of the Water Lilies: two oval rooms in sequence, top-lit through diffusing skylights.
Paul Guillaume's dealership, opened at 6 rue de Miromesnil in February 1914 and later at 59 rue La Boétie — first Paris home of Modigliani's market, the 1918 Matisse–Picasso confrontation, and African sculpture hung beside modern painting.
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The house museum holding the world's largest Monet collection — Impression, Sunrise among it — and the leading collection of Berthe Morisot, both by family bequest.
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The national museum for art from 1848 to 1914, with the major Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection inside Paris's former Orléans railway terminus.
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André Le Nôtre's great axis between the Louvre and the Concorde — the garden every walker in these pages crossed sooner or later, palace or no palace.
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The Belle Époque restaurant on the rue Royale, opened in 1893 and still trading behind the same Art Nouveau interior. The City of Paris names it among the places Marcel Proust went out to with friends — a rare Proust address that is still doing exactly what it did.
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A grand hotel on the rue de Rivoli facing the Tuileries, and the Paris address Salvador Dalí returned to for roughly thirty years — arriving for a month at a time with a retinue, and treating the suite as a studio, a stage and a place to be seen.
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The grandest address on the Place de la Concorde — where Jake Barnes, the narrator of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, crosses the river to write letters on impressive stationery and drink a Jack Rose with George the barman.
Explore the placeSources for the museum’s collection, the building, and the people connected with it.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Musée de l'Orangerie page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Musée de l'Orangerie page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Musée de l'Orangerie page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Musée de l'Orangerie page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Musée de l'Orangerie page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Musée de l'Orangerie page.
Museum histories, collection records and archival sources support the account above. The official visitor pages carry current hours and admission details.
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