Orsay Museum

Located in the heart of Paris, along the Seine, opposite the Tuileries Gardens, the Musée d'Orsay brings together a wide variety of works from 1848 to 1914. It has the most important collection of impressionist paintings in the world. Our hotel is located opposite the Musée d'Orsay.

History of the Musée d’Orsay

The Museum was originally a former railway station, the Gare d'Orsay, which was to serve the lines of south-west France. It was designed in 1898 by the architect Victor Laloux and inaugurated at the 1900 Universal Exhibition. The decision to transform this station into a national museum was taken in 1977, on the initiative of the President of the Republic, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. The architectural project was entrusted to the French team ACT architecture, composed of the architects Renaud Baldon, Pierre Colboc and Jean-Paul Philippon. Their project, selected from six proposals in 1979, was to respect the architecture of Victor Laloux's station while reinterpreting it to create the new museum. In particular, the project had to respect the enhancement of the large nave and use it as the main axis of the museographic tour. In 1986, the Musée d'Orsay was inaugurated by François Mitterrand, then President of the Republic. Works from the Louvre Museum, the Jeu de Paume Museum and the Georges Pompidou Centre were brought together.

A museum with an interdisciplinary character

The originality of the Museum lies above all in its interdisciplinary character. Painting, graphic arts, sculpture, but also decorative arts, photography, architectural creation, and, on the occasion of temporary exhibitions, literature, music, cinema and publishing, are all represented. The Musée d'Orsay has around 6,000 works, half of which are on permanent display on three levels, grouped in various ways: chronologically, thematically, or by collection. The Impressionist movement plays a major role in the Museum's collection. Among the major works are Alexandre Cabanel's Birth of Venus, Paul Cézanne's Card Players and Edouard Manet's Lunch on the Grass.