The Musée d'Orsay before opening

Why it is on the list

The Orsay holds the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings in the world: Morisot, Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin and van Gogh.¹ It hangs in the former Gare d'Orsay, a railway station finished for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, under the station's barrel vault and its great clock.¹ Before opening the galleries hold only your group and a lecturer.² Breakfast comes first, in the small salon of the restaurant: the dining room of the old station hotel, with ceilings by Gabriel Ferrier and Benjamin Constant, a listed historic monument.²

It is the wrong choice for Monet's Water Lilies alone: those hang at the Musée de l'Orangerie across the river, which gives its two oval rooms to a private group after hours. For an evening, the Orsay also opens from 6.30 to 9 pm for a guided visit with a drink, or from 7.30 pm to midnight with every gallery open and dinner for up to 300, every day but Thursday.²

How to get it

Write to the museum's events office at location@musee-orsay.fr or call +33 1 40 49 47 81 with your date and numbers.³ Ask for the breakfast and private visit (petit-déjeuner et visite privilège); it runs Tuesday to Friday from 8.30 to 10.30 am, and you choose the permanent collections or the current exhibition.² On a Thursday the museum stays open late, so the evening formulas are not offered that day.³

Discretion

The group has the galleries before the public is let in.² Taxis set down on rue de Solférino and on the quai Valéry Giscard d'Estaing; the museum is accessible to wheelchair users and lends wheelchairs.²