Recently I have visited Musée d’Orsay in Paris for the first time. In this post I will take you on a tour inside this fabulous museum!

Last month I went to Paris for a weekend, together with my partner in crime & my best friend ever aka Katrien. We had a wonderful time (needless to say) and I will write a couple of travelposts on our weekend as we packed in heaps of things in those 36 hours of pure Parisian bliss!

Today I will take you to Musée d’Orsay, on the Left Bank of the Seine. The building is so impressive on its own. Even if you don’t have the time to take a peek inside, make sure you pass the museum, which was actually a train station, built at the end of the 19th century.

In 1986 it was turned into a musem and it is now one of the largest art museums in Europe.

We hadn’t bought tickets in advance, but it didn’t take us too long to enter the museum. We only had to queue about 10-15 minutes so I guess we were lucky!

On entering the museum, we were immediately stunned by the fabulous hall with many sculptures. On both long sides of the hall are several exhibition room and there is also a temporary exhibition for which you have to pay extra if you want to see that.

If you want to see the entire museum from top to bottom and visit the temporary exhibition as well, you’d better make sure to take plenty of time (4-6 hours at a minimum). But we decided to spend a maximum of 2 hours in the museum, so we had to be quite selective in the rooms we wanted to see.

We mainly picked out the ones showing impressionist and post-impressionist art and saw masterpieces of Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Sisley, Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh,…

As I was allowed to take pictures (without flash that is), I took the opportunity to take pictures of my favourite paintings which you can see below.

Make sure to reserve some time to visit the museum shops. I bought some lovely souvenirs. There is also a shop which only sells books about art. If you don’t find it here, I guess you won’t find it anywhere as they have such an extensive offer!

Make sure you scroll all the way down to see more pictures of Musée d’ Orsay! Have you ever visited this museum?

Love, Kathleen