20 must-see museums in Paris

What are the museums to visit in Paris? Our top 20 museums to visit in the French capital!

Paris, the economic, political and cultural lung of France, is a multicultural city, full of art and history: it is therefore little to say that there are plethora of museums to visit in Paris. With 2.2 million intra-muros inhabitants – and 12.5 million people throughout the Île-de-France – it is the largest urban area in Europe after Moscow, Istanbul and London. In addition, Paris attracts nearly 32 million visitors per year, making it one of the world’s most visited capitals. To facilitate your museum marathon to visit in Paris, we recommend you to opt for it Paris Museum Pass .

An influential city from the Gallo-Roman era, Paris is “the City of Light” to visit, the “muscular city” not to be missed, an incredible culture concentrate where every street, every building, every plot of land has a history filled with artistic and cultural symbols. Paris is indeed present in all the arts: literature, popular songs, music, theatre, cinema, architecture, sculpture, painting, photography, etc. The result is an abyssal amount of museums to visit in Paris, of which we make a brief presentation.

1. The Louvre Museum

With over 460,000 timeless works from Antiquity to the present day, the Louvre Museum is one of the world’s largest museums of art and history. You will discover world-famous works, such as La Joconde, La Vénus de Milo, the Radeau de la Méduse, La Liberté guiding the people, La mort de la Vierge, La Dentellière, Le Sacre de Napoléon, le Portrait de Louis XIV en costume de sacre, etc.

99, rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris.

2. The Musée d’Orsay

The Western Art Museum of the contemporary period from 1848 to 1914, you will have access to an incredible diversity of works of art at the Musée d’Orsay: paintings, sculptures, architecture, photographs, graphic and decorative arts. Among others are Les Glaneuses (Millet), Le Bal du moulin de la Galette (Renoir), Autoportrait (V. v. Gogh), Les Joueurs de cartes (Cézanne), Les raboteurs de parquet (Caillebotte), Les robes (Monet), etc.

1, rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris.

3. The Centre Georges Pompidou

Designed by French President G. Pompidou (1911-1974), the building – also known as Beaubourg – welcomes the largest collection of contemporary art in Europe. The Centre Pompidou also has a very large number of major works of modern art.

Place Georges Pompidou, Paris, 75004.

4. The Quai Branly Museum

This museum houses a very dense permanent collection dedicated to the arts of non-Western civilizations (Americas, Oceania, Asia and Africa). The works of all communities in the world are exhibited. Uncontournable museums to visit in Paris, the Musée du Quai Branly discovers the cultural characteristics and history of each continent.

37 quai Branly, Paris, 75007.

5. Le Grand Palais

Built for the 1900 Universal Exhibition, it was built for the glory of French art, which became a historic monument in 2000. The Grand Palais presents four temporary exhibitions per year.

3, avenue du Général Eisenhower, Paris, 75008.

6. The Petit Palais

A true Musée des Beaux-Arts de Paris, 1300 works are exhibited (sculptures, paintings, tapestries, art objects), from the ancient and medieval period to the 19th century through the French, Italian, Flemish and Dutch Renaissance. Delacroix, Monet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, are on display.

Avenue Winston Churchill, 75008 Paris.

7. Palais de la Découverte

This museum is dedicated to all sciences by focusing on the presentation of fun and interactive experiences: astronomy, biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics, earth sciences, one of the immanquables on the list of museums to visit in Paris, for adults and young people.

Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt, 75008 Paris.

8. Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie

Flickr – coolmonfrere

The Celebrity Museum of the Parc de la Villette is a vast complex dedicated to the discovery of science, with experimental protocols: pedagogical and playful, in a process of popularization for the little ones.

30, avenue Corentin Cariou, 75019 Paris.

9. The National Museum of Natural History

With the Great Gallery of Evolution, we contemplate the skeletons and representations filled with real size of the disappeared or extinct species: dinosaurs, raptors or mammouths sit peacefully to make us feel tiny. Animals from the 5 continents, from the Prehistory to today.

57, rue Cuvier, 75 005 Paris.

10. The Museum of Arts and Crafts

Since 1819, the museum has been home to a vast collection of inventions of all kinds: astrolabes, celestial spheres, barometers, clocks and computational instruments, machine models, cinematographs (brothers of Light), the steam plane of Clément Ader, the monoplane of Louis Blériot, etc.

60, rue Réaumur, 75003 Paris.

11. The Picasso Museum

Within the Picasso Museum, access Pablo Picasso’s most important collection of works in the world. In this important building among the museums to visit in Paris, you will explore Célestine , The Supreme or Portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter , between cubism and strabism of the famous artist.

5, rue de Thorigny, 75 003 Paris.

12. The Museum of Montmartre

The aim of the Montmartre Museum is to explain in painting how the Butte Montmartre has become what it is today: great artists stayed there – such as A. Renoir - the opportunity to relive important sections of the history of Paris like the Commune of Paris (1871), for example, and whose Butte Montmartre – a small charming village in Paris – was the epicentre

12-14, rue Cortot, 75018 Paris.

13. The Musée national des arts asiatiques (Musée Guimet)

This museum exhibits one of the largest collections of Asian art in the world: Khmer works of Southeast Asia, collections of Buddha, Chinese art rooms dedicated to Pakistan, Tibet, Nepal or Japan and Korea.

6, Place d’Iéna, 75 016 Paris.

14. The Orangerie Museum

The Musée de l’Orangerie, a temple of impressionist art, houses a collection of paintings by world famous artists, like Monet, Renoir, Matisse or Picasso, Modigliani, Cézanne, etc. A journey out of time that propels between the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

Jardin des Tuileries, 75 001 Paris.

15. The Museum of Modern Art

From the permanent exhibitions of works of the 20th century, to the discovery of the great pictorial movements that have passed through this period, there are also lesser-known artists than those exhibited in the centre of Beaubourg. Temporary exhibitions are a good part of international contemporary art.

11, Avenue du Président Wilson, 75 116 Paris.

16. The Museum of the Middle Ages

A uncommon museum dedicated to medieval art, which catapults the visitor through 15 centuries of history of French and European art. In the Hotel de Cluny, there are also the Arènes de Lutèce, the unique Gallo-Romain vestige of Paris: the Baths of Cluny. It is one of the most important medieval art collections in the world, representing Gothic and Romanesque art.

6, Place Paul Painlevé, 75 005 Paris.

17. The Museum of Decorative Arts

The museum highlights the evolution of techniques through History, exhibiting a collection of 150,000 works ranging from wood art to ceramics and glass. A temple for all lovers of antique furniture, modern architecture and decor art.

107, rue de Rivoli, 75 001 Paris.

18. The Museum of Architecture and Heritage

This museum in the heart of Paris reveals the great French architectural movements of the Middle Ages today. One of the most important museums to visit in Paris exhibits gigantic reconstructions of real-sized religious and civil buildings. Wall paintings, stained glass, church portals, a journey through the corridors of Time.

1, Place du Trocadéro, 75 016 Paris.

19. The Rodin Museum

Formerly the workshop of the great sculptor, this imposing 18th century residence in which the Rodin Museum is located is one of the most beautiful museums in Paris and contains more than 7,000 sculptures by Rodin, including his masterpieces The thinker , Kiss , The bourgeois of Calais and The Gate of Hell , alongside 8,000 drawings and gouaches of the artist.

77, Rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris

20. Fondation Louis Vuitton

High above the Bois de Boulogne as a magnificent ship with undulating crystal sails, the Fondation Louis Vuitton designed by architect Frank Gehry, is what is more captivating on the Paris horizon since the unveiling of the Centre Pompidou in 1977.

8, Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, 75116 Paris

Main photo credit: Flickr – Randy Connolly