Museum in Paris
Paid entryThere is an entry charge.
The Musee de l’Orangerie sits at the western corner of the Tuileries Garden in Paris, and it houses Monet’s Water Lilies: eight enormous panels displayed in two oval rooms the painter designed for them himself. The canvases wrap all the way around the walls at eye level, so standing in the middle feels less like visiting a museum and more like stepping into a pond as the light changes through the day. Monet donated the cycle to the French state, and the rooms opened in 1927, the year after he died. Below them, an easy-to-miss lower level holds the Walter-Guillaume collection: Cezanne, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, and Modigliani in one compact space.
Entry is paid, but the Orangerie is free on the first Sunday of the month, the same budget window that opens most of the national museums in Paris. Time a visit for that Sunday and the water lily rooms cost nothing. Even on a paid day, the Tuileries Garden around the museum is always free to walk through, so a quiet stroll between the fountains and statues costs the budget traveler nothing at all.
For more Impressionist work, pair the Orangerie with the Musee d’Orsay a short walk across the Seine, and remember the Louvre Museum anchors the eastern end of the same garden. Walking the whole stretch from one to the other is one of the better free things to do in central Paris.
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Other places worth the walk, and what each one costs.
The Arc de Triomphe is Napoleon's triumphal arch at the western end of the Champs-Elysees, the largest triumphal arch in the world at nearly 50 meters tall. Napoleon commissioned it in 1806 to honor the Grande Armee, and it was finished in 1836, long after his fall.
Canal Saint-Martin is a tree-lined waterway in the 10th arrondissement, threaded with arched iron footbridges and a chain of locks that still raise and lower passing boats. Napoleon ordered it dug to bring clean water into the city, and it opened in 1825.
The Avenue des Champs-Elysees runs from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, the most famous boulevard in the world. It forms the central stretch of the historic axis that lines up with the Tuileries Garden and the Louvre Museum to the east. Free to walk.
The Eiffel Tower is the most recognized structure in the world, built for the 1889 World's Fair by Gustave Eiffel's engineering company and never taken down. It was meant to be temporary, a 20-year exhibit, but its usefulness as a radio and telegraph mast saved it and it has stood in the 7th arrondissement ever since.
The Grand Canal is a cruciform artificial lake at the western end of the Palace of Versailles Gardens, roughly 1.6 kilometers along its long arm. Andre Le Notre designed it as the vanishing point of the garden's central axis and as a mirror for the sky, so the whole layout pulls the eye toward the water.
Ile de la Cite is the island in the Seine where Paris began, the spot where the Gallic Parisii and then Roman Lutetia first took root before the city spread to both banks. It is the historic heart of Paris, and almost everything on it can be seen for free.
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