Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay, the manageably sized museum of Impressionist, Postimpressionist, and Art Nouveau movements. Housed in an old train station, the building itself inspires and compliments the art within.
The Musée d’Orsay is a sublime museum of Impressionism in Paris. Everything about it is exceptional and nothing detracts from its good repute—except that you cannot take photographs inside.
It starts with the architecture. The museum was retrofitted into a Beaux-Arts, turn-of-the-century train station, which sits on the Left Bank of the Seine. The interior exceeds its outer façade with a grand, vaulted ceiling and an abundance of natural light.
The collection is absolutely magnificent, but I lean favorably toward the Impressionists. My favorites were Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhone and Renoir’s Bal du Moulin de la Galette, where he captures the leafy shadows just right. In a couple days we will visit the very same moulin in the Montmartre section.
We're in the Musée d'Orsay at the upper overlook.
This statue of a horse used to be at the Trocadero, but was moved to the Musée d'Orsay in 1986.
It's a rainy day in Paris, perfect for a museum. Here, Mel is outside the Musée d'Orsay.
This museum is bite-sized—it only takes a half day to see the collection, which is nice. After our tour, we needed some food, so we sat under the awning at Les Deux Musées across the street. My American instinct tells me that, being the first restaurant one sees coming out of the museum, it must be overpriced, but it really wasn’t and the food was delicious.
The rain was letting up, so we’re going to head across the Seine to see the Tuileries Gardens.
Autumn is coming to Paris, the leaves are almost in their prime.