3.6 million
Annual Visitors
45,000 works
Collection
2–4 hours
Recommended Visit
Victor Laloux (railway station, 1900) · ACT Architecture (museum conversion, 1986)
Architect
About Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900.
The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It is best known for its extensive collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces by painters including Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and van Gogh.
Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe.
The renovation that transformed the disused station into a museum preserved the grand vaulted glass roof and the famous clocks, creating one of the most distinctive museum spaces in the world.
Masterworks & Must-See Highlights
The works that define Musée d'Orsay — and why they matter.
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
Georges Seurat · 1884–1886
Impressionism Level (upper floor)
Wait — that's in Chicago. The Orsay holds Seurat's study and his other divisionist works. The star Orsay piece is Olympia by Manet.
Olympia
Édouard Manet · 1863
Room 14, Level 5
A nude reclines with a direct, challenging gaze — a radical reinterpretation of the classical Venus. Manet caused a scandal at the Salon of 1865 by depicting a real, modern woman rather than an idealised goddess.
Bal du moulin de la Galette
Pierre-Auguste Renoir · 1876
Impressionism Level, Upper Floor
Renoir's sun-dappled crowd of Montmartre revellers captures the joyful leisure of a summer Sunday. The flickering interplay of light and shadow through foliage is an Impressionist set piece of breathtaking confidence.
The Dance Class
Edgar Degas · 1874
Impressionism Level
Degas' immersive view into the world of the Paris Opéra ballet. The diagonal composition and off-centre cropping — influenced by Japanese woodblock prints — gave a new informality to a traditionally formal subject.
Starry Night Over the Rhône
Vincent van Gogh · 1888
Post-Impressionism, Upper Floor
Painted in Arles a year before the more famous Starry Night now in MoMA, this nocturne shows the glittering reflections of gas lamps on the Rhône. It is among the most luminous paintings in the Orsay collection.
Collections & Highlights
Frequently Asked Questions
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A small ask before you go
You've just explored one of humanity's greatest collections of beauty. Art has the power to move us, inspire us, and change how we see the world. But millions of people will never see beauty like this — not because the art isn't there, but because they can't see at all.
Preventable blindness, caused by conditions like cataracts and trachoma, affects people of all ages across the world's poorest communities. A small gift — for the cost of a museum ticket — can provide a simple surgery to restore someone's sight and transform their life.