What to see at the Musée Marmottan Monet?

The Ground Floor: Paul Marmottan's Townhouse

You step into a home, not a museum. Paul Marmottan, a historian of the Napoleonic era, filled the rooms with First Empire furniture and objects, and it's this setting you walk through first, with windows overlooking the Ranelagh garden. On the same level, the illuminated manuscripts from the Daniel Wildenstein donation: three hundred and twenty-two medieval and Renaissance miniatures, cut from manuscripts, which you need to see up close. Many visitors skip this room. Those who enter stay longer than they planned. The history of the house is on the museum's history page.

The Underground Room: Monet

This is why you come. Opened in 1970 to display the large formats from Michel Monet's bequest four years earlier, it brings together the world's largest collection of Monet works. Here you'll find Impression, Sunrise (1872), the painting that gave the movement its name, which I describe on its dedicated page. Around it: The Train in the Snow. The Locomotive (1875), The Pont de l'Europe, Gare Saint-Lazare (1877), Rouen Cathedral, Sunlight Effect, End of Day (1892), London, the Houses of Parliament, Reflections on the Thames (1905). Then the paintings from Giverny: numerous Water Lilies painted between 1897 and 1919, The Japanese Bridge (1918-1924), The Rose Path, Giverny (1920-1922). The museum is the only one to own the final Japanese Bridge and The House Seen from the Rose Garden, painted by a nearly blind Monet. What sets these works apart from the panels at the Orangerie is on the Water Lilies at the Marmottan page.

The First Floor: Berthe Morisot and the Impressionists

You go up by the stairs or the lift. The first floor houses the world's largest collection of Berthe Morisot, with twenty-five paintings and sixty-five watercolors, pastels, and drawings from the Denis and Annie Rouart bequest: Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight, At the Ball, the Self-Portrait from 1885. Around her, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Gauguin, Degas, Caillebotte, Guillaumin. I’ve dedicated a page to Berthe Morisot at the Marmottan, because this is the part of the museum visitors discover without expecting it—and the one they mention to me afterward.

Temporary Exhibition

The museum schedules two to three per year, included in the ticket. They occupy their own rooms, and it's during their first few weeks that the ticket desk gets busy. Save them for the end, when you'll know how much time you have left.

After your visit

You exit onto rue Louis-Boilly, just steps from the Ranelagh garden. What's nearby is listed on around the museum. And if you want to see the real-life inspiration after the paintings, the day trip below takes you to Giverny that same afternoon.

Book the Marmottan + Giverny day trip

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