Museum · Tuileries · 1er arrondissement

Orangerie des Tuileries

The buildingStill standing

Getting inHours or admission

What's there nowStill the same

The 1852 orangery of the Tuileries garden, converted to Monet's specifications and opened in 1927 as the museum of the Water Lilies.

Address: Jardin des Tuileries, place de la Concorde (côté Seine), 75001 Paris
Years: 1852–present

Illustration The Orangerie's east portico in color — pale limestone, gilded ORANGERIE lettering, trimmed trees at either side under a clear sky.

The portico in color — limestone and gilt lettering above the entrance.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

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.

Key facts

Built: 1852, as the Tuileries garden's orangery
Conversion: Camille Lefèvre, to Claude Monet's specifications, 1922–1927
Museum opened: May 1927
Renovated: 2000–2006, restoring the natural light

Documentary photographs

Archival and present-day photographs, reproduced with rights verified.

The Orangerie des Tuileries seen from across the Seine, its long glazed roof above the trees of the Terrasse du Bord-de-l'Eau — The building from the Left Bank, 2011: the long glazed roof of the 1852 orangery above the river terrace of the Tuileries.2011 · Jebulon, Wikimedia Commons · CC0

Empire-style cradle of the Roi de Rome on a velvet platform before a floral hanging, photographed at a 1932 exhibition — The Roi de Rome centenary exhibition of 1932, in the building's decades of mixed civic use before the 1927 Water Lilies rooms grew into today's museum.1932 · Agence Rol; Bibliothèque nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Scale-model room seen through a viewing window at the Musée de l'Orangerie, miniature paintings hung over a dining table and parquet floor — The museum's scale model of the rooms where the collection once hung, identified on Wikimedia Commons as a reconstruction of Paul Guillaume's interiors.2009 · Sailko, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.5

Wood-panelled salon at the Musée de l'Orangerie hung with paintings and furnished with a desk, commode, and velvet armchair — A panelled salon staged as a collector's interior, photographed in May 2017: paintings hung close over period furniture, the way the collection lived before it entered the museum.2017 · xiquinhosilva, Flickr / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0

One of the two oval Water Lilies rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie, curved canvases on both walls under a diffused skylight — One of the two oval rooms, 2017. The canvases curve with the walls and the light falls from the diffusing skylight Monet specified.2017 · Brady Brenot, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Full panorama of the first oval Water Lilies room: four curved compositions wrapping the walls under diffused light — The first oval room in panorama, 2017 — four of the eight compositions curve with the walls.2017 · Brady Brenot, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Full panorama of the second oval Water Lilies room: four curved compositions of willows and water under diffused light — The second oval room in panorama, 2017 — the remaining four compositions of Monet's cycle.2017 · Brady Brenot, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

In images

Pen-and-ink illustration of the Musée de l'Orangerie's east portico — sculpted pediment over the ORANGERIE inscription, paired Ionic columns, and the glass entrance under the arch. — The east portico, facing the Tuileries garden.Editorial illustration

The Orangerie's east portico in color — pale limestone, gilded ORANGERIE lettering, trimmed trees at either side under a clear sky. — The portico in color — limestone and gilt lettering above the entrance.Editorial illustration

Timeline

1852
Built as the orangery of the Tuileries garden.
1922
Conversion for the Water Lilies begins under Camille Lefèvre.
1927
The Water Lilies rooms open in May.
2000–2006
Renovation removes the 1960s mezzanine and restores the skylights.

On the map

Artists who knew this place

Camille Lefèvre

French · Architect

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.

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