An Art Lover’s Guide to Paris: Museums, Architecture & Street Art

The French capital has a dizzying amount of art on display. Whilst the Louvre is undoubtedly worth a visit, Paris has so much more to offer in the form of smaller art galleries with exciting features. However, museums and galleries aren’t the only aspect of art you’ll find here, so I’ve put together this brief guide of where you can find architectural masterpieces and striking pieces of street art too.

Museums

Centre Pompidou

Location: Place Georges-Pompidou, 75004 Paris
The Centre Pompidou is one of the largest museums of modern art in Europe and where you can see some of the world’s most well-known examples of modernist art. You could easily spend the whole day inside Renzo Piano’s industrial masterpiece which houses over 100,000 works from the 20^th century to present day. There’s so much to discover, including Marcel Duchamp’s Urinal, which gave rise to the ‘ready-made’ and conceptual art to the great pioneers of Cubism: Fernand Léger, Picasso and George Braque who broke tradition by rejecting the single viewpoint.

Musée D’Orsay

Location: 1 Rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris
Housed in a former railway station, Musée D’Orsay is one of the largest art museums in Europe and home to the largest collection of impressionist masterpieces in the world, including Monet, Manet and Degas. Be sure to make your way to the top floor where you can take in beautiful views of Paris just beyond the enormous clock window.

Musée Rodin

Location: 77 Rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris
Set within the sculptor’s former residence and studio, Musée Rodin is the perfect antidote to the hustle and bustle of the larger art museums. Surrounded by peaceful gardens, Rodin’s sculptures, paintings, and drawings are placed throughout the mansion known as the Hôtel Biron, where writer Jean Cocteau and painter Henri Matisse once rented rooms. If you watch Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris before visiting, you’ll recognise a scene from the movie is shot inside the garden where you’ll also find many of Rodin’s sculptures. 

Musée du Louvre

Location: Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris
Whilst everyone knows the Louvre for Mona Lisa, there’s work by Jacques-Louis David, Caravaggio, El Greco and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres to name only few that shouldn’t be missed. It would take weeks to see everything the Louvre has to offer, so it’s worth focusing on specific rooms. In fact, I’m inclined to say if you only have a short time in Paris, then I suggest focusing your time on other museums in this list which are more mangeable to get around. However, if you’ve got your heart set on stepping foot inside, I suggest buying a pre-paid ticket here.

Musée Gustave Moreau

Location: 14 Rue de la Rochefoucauld, 75009 Paris
Gustave Moreau was a painter of the French Symbolist school and was an important influence on his most famous student, Henri Matisse. Now you can explore Moreau’s perfectly preserved 19th-century home including his studio, office, and private living areas. However, the real gem of visiting this museum is the spiral staircase which has to be one of the most beautiful and most romantic staircases I’ve ever seen.

Architecture

Cinémathèque Française

Architect: Frank Gehry
Location: 51 Rue de Bercy
You can’t talk about contemporary architecture without Frank Gehry cropping up in conversation. He has such a distinct style that even a novice like me could pick out a building of his without needing someone to point it out. Originally built in 1994 as the American Center in Paris but since 2005 it’s home to France’s national library/museum/theater celebrating the history of film.

Villa Savoye

Architect: Le Corbusier
Location: 82 Rue de Villiers
Completed in 1931 on the outskirts of Paris, this modernist villa is considered so important to the contribution of 20th century architecture that it has been been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site along with several other works by Corbusier. Originally built as a country retreat on behest of the Savoye family, it now belongs to the French state after surviving several threats of demolition and therefore can now be visited.

Palace of Versailles

Architect: Louis Le Vau, Andre Le Notre and Charles Lebrun
Location: Place d’Armes, 78000 Versailles
Another UNESCO World Heritage Site to tick off your list. The site began as Louis XIII’s hunting lodge before his son Louis XIV transformed and expanded it, moving the court and government of France to Versailles in 1682. Each of the three French kings who lived there until the French Revolution added improvements to make it more beautiful. Along with the magnificent garden, this is a classic that everyone should visit once in a lifetime. You can avoid queuing for tickets by booking here.

Street Art

There’s so much street art in Paris, it’s hard to know where to begin and how to narrow down the best ones but I’ve given it a go.

Keith Haring

Location: 149 Rue de Sevres, 75015 Paris
An influential name in the pop art and 1980s street culture, it’s a privilege seeing any work by Keith Haring who died in 1990. The location of this wall mural at 15^th arrondissement, inside the grounds of Necker-Enfants Malades hospital (which was the world’s first paediatric hospital) is typically an odd place to find such an iconic piece of work. However, describing this piece, Haring said, “I made this painting to amuse the sick children in this hospital, now and in the future,”.

Jef Aérosol

Location: Rue Brisemiche, 4th
Jef Aérosol’s stunning mural of Salvador Dali titled Chut – which translates to hush in English – has become a piece as iconic as the Pompidou Centre that it sits across from. This, amongst others, forms the heart of the 1980s street art movement. This is one of his more known pieces, but he also has work up and down the country. 

Mixed Street Artists

Location: 107 Rue Oberkampf, 75011 Paris
The neighbourhood around Oberkampf is renowned for its vibrant walls and range of high profile street artists, with the likes of Jerome Mesnager and Nemo showcasing their talents. However, it’s perhaps best known for Le MUR (translates in English to ‘the wall’) – a dedicated wall with a revolving string of internationally acclaimed artists, which is completely redone every two weeks. It’s also home to a thriving nightlife district, if you’re looking for a party once you’ve gotten your cultural fix. Who’s the giant rat by? That would be Portuguese artist, Bordalo II.

Will you be visiting Paris soon?