Best Museums in France
France is home to 17 world-class museums across 6 cities, from ancient art and archaeology to modern and contemporary collections.
All Museums in France
Paris
The Louvre
The world's largest art museum and a historic monument in Paris.
Founded 1793
Paris
Musée d'Orsay
Housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, home to the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world.
Founded 1986
Paris
Centre Pompidou
France's national museum of modern and contemporary art, instantly recognisable by its inside-out architecture.
Founded 1977
Paris
Musée Rodin
An intimate museum and sculpture garden devoted to the work of Auguste Rodin in the elegant Hôtel Biron.
Founded 1919
Paris
Musée Picasso Paris
The world's largest public collection of Pablo Picasso's work, set in the seventeenth-century Hôtel Salé.
Founded 1985
Paris
Musée de l'Orangerie
Home to Monet's monumental Water Lilies cycle, displayed in the oval rooms he designed himself.
Founded 1927
Paris
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
Jean Nouvel's living-wall museum on the Seine devoted to the arts and civilisations of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.
Founded 2006
Paris
Musée de Cluny – Musée National du Moyen Âge
France's national museum of the Middle Ages, set on a Roman bath complex in the Latin Quarter.
Founded 1843
Free Entry
Paris
Musée Carnavalet
The museum of the city of Paris, in two adjoining Marais mansions with free admission to the permanent collection.
Founded 1880
Paris
Musée Marmottan Monet
Home to the world's largest collection of Claude Monet's paintings, in an elegant nineteenth-century mansion.
Founded 1934
Paris
Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection
François Pinault's contemporary art museum inside Paris's nineteenth-century commodities exchange, redesigned by Tadao Ando.
Founded 2021
Paris
Fondation Louis Vuitton
Frank Gehry's spectacular glass 'sailboat' building at the edge of the Bois de Boulogne — one of the most architecturally dramatic contemporary art museums in Europe.
Founded 2014
Lyon
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon
One of France's largest fine-art museums outside Paris, in a former Benedictine convent on the Place des Terreaux.
Founded 1801
Marseille
MUCEM — Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations
A striking national museum on Marseille's waterfront devoted to the cultures of the Mediterranean basin.
Founded 2013
Lille
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille
One of the largest fine-art museums in France, often ranked second only to the Louvre for its painting collection.
Founded 1809
Toulouse
Musée des Augustins
Toulouse's fine-art museum housed in a fourteenth-century Augustinian monastery in the heart of the pink city.
Founded 1795
Versailles
Palace of Versailles
The grandest royal palace in Europe — Louis XIV's monument to absolute power, with the Hall of Mirrors, royal apartments, and 800 hectares of formal gardens. One of the most visited historic sites in the world.
Founded 1837