Museums of Paris

French National Bibliotheque (Bibliothèque Nationale de France) BNF - Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand

The French National Bibliotheque (Bibliothèque Nationale de France) BNF - is also know as the Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand

You can visit it :
Haut-de-jardin (bibliothèque d'étude) open Tuesday to Saturday from 10.00 a.m to 8.00 p.m, Sundays from 12 noon to 7.00 p.m
Rez-de-jardin (bibliothèque de recherche) open Monday from 2.00 p.m to 8.00 p.m, Tuesday to Saturday from 9.00 a.m to 8.00 p.m
Grande et petite galeries open every day except Mondays from 10.00 a.m to 7.00 p.m, Sundays from 12 noon to 7.00 p.m

The former 16th century mansion situated in The Marais district of Paris and bought by the City of Paris in 1866 for its historical collections, the Musée Carnavalet offers the visitor a large collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints and decorative arts on the history of Paris since its origins to the present time.
Since 1989, the Musée Carnavalet has been considerably enlarged by the addition of the Hôtel Le Pelletier de Saint-Fargeau, the vast 17th century residence situated at 29 rue de Sévigné presenting the major collections devoted to the revolutionary period as well as works from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Centre national d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou - Beaubourg Museum

The Centre Pompidou, called as well Beaubourg, was born in February 1977 to focus on all forms of modern and contemporary creation: sculpture, painting, books, cinema, video, performances, music, etc.

The Centre's activities:
- presentation of the permanent collections of the Musée national d’art moderne - Centre de création industrielle (Mnam-Cci),
- exhibits,
- public reading space, provided by the Bibliothèque publique d’information (Bpi),
- performances (theater, dance, music),
- cinema, symposia and debates, and publications.

Museum and exhibitions : from 11am to 9pm.
(no ticket sales after 8pm, halls close at 8.50pm).

Night opening on Thursdays until 11pm for certain exhibitions (no ticket sales after 10pm).
The Museum & exhibitions ticket allows you to visit all current exhibitions, the Musée national d'art moderne, the Museum gallery, the Graphic art gallery, the Espace 315, the Children's gallery and the panoramic view of Paris (level 6) on the same day.

Webcams of the Centre Pompidou:
View of the Center's entrance, night and day
One of the finest views of Paris
Inside Beaubourg

Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration

La Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration ( National city of the history of immigration) is a public corporation located the Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris - charged to gather, safeguard, emphasize and to make available the elements relating to the history from immigration to France, in particular since the XIXe century.

A brand new Museum in Paris that opened its doors in October 2007.

• Where is the Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris on Google map.

Grévin Museum Paris (Musée Grévin)

Discover a completely renovated Grévin Museum in Paris. Experience the Spirit of Paris of yesterday and of today with astounding scenes : the major events of the 20th Century, French history and. the latest news.

The brasserie, the theatre, artists' studios. all the legendary Parisian haunts where you will rub shoulders with the "Tout Paris" celebrities.

Three hundred wax figures are waiting to meet you at the Grévin Museum, to be photographed with you, to be remembered forever...

La Cité de l Architecture et du Patrimoine - Paris

The Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine is a new kind of cultural institution and the biggest architectural centre in the world.

It presents architecture from the 12th century to the current day in an exceptional 23,000m² space.

The Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine opened in 2007 is the latest museum of Paris after the Quai Branly Museum. Next to the Palais de Tokyo and the Eiffel Tower.

Largest museum of France, The Louvre Museum ( Le Musée du Louvre in french) presents collections of western art from the Middle Ages to 1850, and the antique civilisations that have preceded and influenced this art.
They are divided into 8 departments : Oriental Antiquities, Islamic Art, Egyptian Antiquities, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities and, for the modern period, Paintings, Sculptures, Art items, Prints and Drawings until 1848. In addition to these departments, the museum presents a section devoted to the history of the Louvre, including the medieval moats erected by Philippe Auguste in 1190.
21 new rooms have been dedicated to collections of Italian and Spanish paintings dating back to the XVIIth and XVIIth centuries.

Let's not forget, the ever so famous masterpieces: the Venus of Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Mona Lisa ofLeonard da Vinci, and so many others.

Open to all since 1793, the Louvre has embodied the concept of a truly "universal" institution. Universal in the scope of its collections, it is also universal in its appeal to some 6 million visitors every year!!
The Louvre, in its successive architectural metamorphoses, has dominated central Paris since the late 12th century. Built on the city's western edge, the original structure was gradually engulfed as the city grew. The dark fortress of the early days was transformed into the modernized dwelling of François I and, later, the sumptuous palace of the Sun King, Louis XIV.
The demolition of the Tuileries in 1882 marked the birth of the modern Louvre. The palace ceased to be the seat of power and was devoted almost entirely to culture. Only the Finance Ministry, provisionally installed in the Richelieu wing after the Commune, remained. Slowly but surely, the museum began to take over the whole of the vast complex of buildings.

• The museum has the "Tourisme et Handicap" label for physical and mental disabilities, and hearing impairment. A special map shows disabled people how to move around the museum (18 lifts, 20 platforms). Totally practicable for people of limited mobility and acknowledged as such by the Parisian delegation member of the Association des Paralysés de France. Tactile space. Documentation in Braille. Visits-conferences in sign language are proposed each month for deaf people. Tel: 01 40 20 59 90; handicap@louvre.fr
  

Museum of Modern Art - City of Paris (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris)

Built on the occasion of the International Exhibition of 1937, the Museum of ModernArt was officially opened in 1961.
To a large extent, it owes its specifically Parisian aspect to the generosity of its donors including Dr Girardin (1953) and Mathilde Amos (1955), Berthe Reysz (1972) Germaine Henry and Robert Thomas (1976-1988) and artists Robert Delaunay, Jean Fautrier and Christian Boltanski.
The museum has major collections of works by Georges Rouault, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Raoul Dufy, Marcel Gromaire and several monumental paintings notably two of the three Henri Matisse triptychs of La Danse (1931-33) and La Fée Electricité (1937) by Raoul Dufy.
Temporary exhibitions form a major part of the museum's activity. Its "historical" program is alternated with monographic exhibitions devoted to great figures of the French or European scene and major European panoramic events combining the historical and contemporary.

The ARC (workshop for research and creativity) is a highly informative source on national and international current events, organising monographic exhibitions and theme-based events on the most up-to-date trends in contemporary art in France and abroad.

Musée de l'Orangerie: The world’s most famous water lilies — the ones painted by Monet — have a refurbished home at this museum, which reopened in May 2006 after six years of renovations. The space also holds an eye-popping collection of paintings from Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Cézanne, Renoir, André Derain and others.

The Musée de la Mode et du Textile (Fashion and Textile Museum) in Paris.

Resulting from the fusion of the collections belonging to the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs (UCAD) and the Union Française des Arts du Costume (UFAC), the Musée de la Mode et du Textile is the heir to a tradition forged by the dynamics of private initiative.

From its opening in 1905, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs has major collections of textiles which are continually enriched with silks, embroidery, printed cotton, costumes, lace, tapestries…

Its collections now contain some 16,000 costumes, 35,000 fashion accessories, 30,000 pieces of textile. A total of over 81,000 works which trace the history of costume from the Regency period to the present-day and innovations in textiles since the 7th century. These collections are regularly enriched by generous gifts made by private donors, designers or manufacturers. They rival with the largest collections in the world, the Musée Galliera, Paris, the Musée des Tissus, Lyon, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

Apart from its historical pieces, the Musée de la Mode et du Textile also has collections of the work of great designers such as Paul Poiret, Madeleine Vionnet, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Christian Dior in the fashion field, and for textiles, Raoul Dufy, Sonia Delaunay or the embroiderer Rébé, to name just a few.

Its long-standing interest in innovation continues with its collection of new forms derived from contemporary design.

Musée de la Parfumerie Fragonard

In the Museum of the Perfume - Le musée de la Parfumerie - Fragonard, in french, discover the history of perfume from the Egyptians to the nineteenth century through bottles, pots-pourris, incense burners, paintings, test tubes...
Presentation of plant and animal raw materials used in making fragrances, extraction techniques, the history of bottling...

The Museums of the Arts Décoratifs

The Arts Décoratifs manage four museums : the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Musée de la Mode et du Textile, the Musée de la Publicité and the Musée Nissim de Camondo.

A total of some 357.100 works 1 is divided between the various museums as follows:

Arts Décoratifs : 150,000 works in departments organized by period or specialty: from medieval furniture to contemporary design via the 18th-century in France, the Empire, Art Nouveau and Art Deco; as well as large collections of jewelry, toys, wallpaper, gold work, ceramics, glass, drawings and an Islamic and Oriental collection.The rich history of the decorative arts from the Middle Ages to modern day is documented in the spanking new museum; 9,000m2 of vast halls and spectacular views over the Tuileries gardens are reason alone to visit. To see absolutly is the Lanvin ‘period rooms’: Jeanne Lanvin’s sumptuous private apartments designed by Rateau are recreated identically from the original.

Publicité : some 100,000 historical and contemporary posters as well as over 20,000 French and foreign advertising films from the 1930s to the present day, radio commercials, promotional objects, packaging, etc.

Mode et textile : 86,000 items of costume, accessories and textiles which trace the development of costume from the Copts to the present day and the development of new textiles since the 14th century. Complemented by a permanent loan from Ufac (Union française des Arts du costume), numbering over 45,000 costumes and accessories.

Musée Nissim de Camondo : 1,100 works making up one of the finest sets of furniture and objets d’art from the second half of the 18th century in France. Under the terms of his will, nothing can be added to Moïse de Camondo’s art collections.

The National Museum of the Middle Ages (Musée National du Moyen-Age)

The Musée National du Moyen-Age in french is located in the Gallo-Roman baths and the Hôtel des Abbés de Cluny (15th century): houses antique sculptures and one of the richest mediaeval collections in the world. Medieval garden.

The National Museum of the Middle Ages holds a number of pieces dating back to before the Middle Ages, illustrating the varied roots of medieval artistic creation.

The Orsay Museum in Paris - Le Musée d'Orsay

On the eve of the 1900 World's Fair, the French government planned to build a more central terminus station on the site of the ruined Palais d'Orsay. The new station needed to be perfectly integrated into its elegant surroundings. From 1900 to 1939, Orsay station was the head of the southwestern French railroad network. The official decision to build the Musée d'Orsay was taken in 1977 and it has been opened to the public in December 1986 in order to show the artistic creation of the western world from 1848 to 1914. It is known worldwide for its famous impressionists collections.

The museum's nationally-owned collections originate from three main institutions: the Musée du Louvre, the Musée du Jeu de Paume and the Musée National d'Art Moderne. Besides painting, sculpture, graphic arts and decorative arts, the museum has also established collections of furniture, architecture and photography. The museum has been organized on three levels: on the ground floor, galleries are distributed on either side of the central nave, which is overlooked by the terraces of the intermediate level. These in turn opening up into additional exhibition galleries. The top floor is installed above the lobby, which covers the length of the quai, and continues into the highest elevations of the former hotel.

The Palais de Tokyo, an art deco building that dates from 1937 , reopened in 2001 after new interior design by french architects Anne Lacaton & Jean-Philippe Vassal who selected rough and ready style (concrete floor, wall and roof).

Today the most creative and fun museum in Paris, the olny one to be open till midnight. The Palais de Tokyo, which is right next door to the Museum of Modern Art at the Trocadero, has opened as a showcase for contemporary art. The idea is to have no permanent collections, but to let experimental artists have somewhere in central Paris to express themselves, hence an opening full of “installation” and “interactive” art.
Derelict for more than a decade, the Art Nouveau twin of the Musée d'Art Moderne reemerged in 2002 as a trendy stripped-down space for contemporary arts with unorthodox, ambitious programming. There is no permanent collection; instead, dynamic temporary exhibits spread over a large, open space that's reminiscent of a construction site, with a trailer for a ticket booth.

We appreciate the self- service restaurant ( great when it’s sunny you can have a meal outside the building), Tokyo Eat the inside restaurant whit great food, the Library – one of the best concerning modern art in Paris and the BlackBlock, the museum store directed by André..
"Vernissage" every first Thursday of the month… do not miss..