19 Museums to Explore in Île-de-France

Checkout places to visit in Île-de-France

Île-de-France

The most populous of the 18 regions of France. It is located in the north-central part of the country and often called the Paris Region because it includes the city of Paris. Île-de-France is densely populated and economically important: it covers only about 2% of France's territory, but has an official estimated population of 12,213,364 (18.2% of the population of France) and accounts for nearly 30% of the French GDP.

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Museums to Explore in Île-de-France

Carnavalet Museum

The Carnavalet - History of Paris museum is the Parisian municipal museum dedicated to the history of Paris from the origins of the city to the present day. Located in the Marais district in rue de Sevigne in Paris. it presents exceptional collections: memories of the French Revolution, paintings, sculptures, furniture, and objets d'art. The museum consists of the Hôtel de Carnavalet and the Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau linked by a gallery on the first floor. It has an area of ​​10,000 sq

Cluny Museum - National Museum of the Middle Ages

A huge museum which was built in the middle ages in Paris at 6 Place Paul-Painlevé. It was formerly the townhouse of the abbots of Cluny, started in 1334. The structure was rebuilt by Jacques d'Amboise, abbot in commendam of Cluny 1485-1510; it combines Gothic and Renaissance elements. In 1843 it was made into a public museum. The museum itself actually consists of two buildings: the frigidarium, where the remains of the Thermes de Cluny are, and the Hôtel de Cluny itself, which houses its impr

Dalí Paris

Dalí Paris presents more than 300 works of a very rich collection acquired from Salvador Dali or great collectors. It has the largest private collection of Salvador Dali art in the heart of Paris. The collection features mainly three-dimensional sculptures of Dalí's best known surrealistic paintings. . His sculptures are one of the major aspects of his life work, materializing in three dimensions his surrealistic obsessional motifs: soft watches, spindly legs animals, open or closed drawers.

Grévin Museum

The Musée Grévin is the wax museum of Paris which is housed in a very peculiar building, which is divided into different rooms including a viewpoint and a theatre. The museum was founded in 1882 by Arthur Meyer, a journalist for Le Gaulois. This museum features over 500 life-like wax characters representing the world’s best-known celebrities. . Visitors will be able to see representations of famous individuals that have had an impact on the course of human history.

Hall of Mirrors

The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France was constructed on what was once a terrace designed by Le Vau. This is a grand Baroque style gallery and one of the most emblematic rooms in the Royal Palace The Hall of Mirrors, the most famous room in the Palace, was built to replace this large terrace designed by the architect Louis Le Vau, which opened onto the garden. This hall has been the scene of events of great historic significance, including the Proclamation of the German Empire

Les Invalides

A complex of buildings which was commissioned in 1670 by Louis XIV in order to provide accommodation and hospital care for wounded soldiers. Later the parts of Les Invalides were converted into the Museum of Arms, the Museum of Contemporary History, and the Museum of Plains-Reliefs and into tombs for Napoleon I and others. It was one of the must-see locations in this area.

Musée d'Orsay

The Musée d'Orsay is a museum National that opened in 1986, located along the left bank of the Seine in Paris. It is housed in the former Orsay station, built by Victor Laloux from 1898 to 1900 and converted into a museum by the decision of the President of the Republic, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Its collections present Western art from 1848 to 1914, in all its diversity: painting, sculpture, decorative arts, graphic art, photography, architecture, etc. It is one of the largest museums in Europ

Musée de l'Orangerie

The Musée de L'Orangerie is an art museum located in Paris. There are works of impressionism It opened in 1927, and is best known for painting the cycle of Water Lilies by Claude Monet which consists of eight large paintings that cover the walls of two large oval rooms You can also see works by famous painters like Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Henri Rousseau and many more.

Musée de Montmartre

The Musée de Montmartre was created in 1960 in Montmartre's oldest structure, built in the 17th century, and houses a collection of paintings, posters and drawings by Toulouse-Lautrec, Modigliani, Kupka, Steinlen, Valadon, Utrillo and more. The buildings were formerly the home of several famous artists, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Suzanne Valadon. it depicts different times and places including some of the famous cabaret shows in Paris such as the Moulin Rouge and the Lapin Agile.

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris

The Decorative Arts Museum is a Parisian museum whose objective is to promote applied fine arts and develop links between industry and culture, creation, and production. It preserves one of the most important collections of decorative arts in the world. The museum pursues the objective which presided over its foundation: "to maintain in France the culture of the arts which pursues the realization of the beautiful in the useful".

Musée Jacquemart-André

The Musée Jacquemart-André, a private museum located at 158 Boulevard Haussmann, owned by the Institut de France, presents collections of art that are worthy of great museums in a magnificent Second Empire mansion. The museum features works by Bellini, Botticini, Pietro Perugino, Canaletto, Alfred Boucher, Rembrandt, Anthony van Dyck, Sandro Botticelli, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and many more. This museum is one of the major cultural centers in Paris.

Musée Marmottan Monet

The Musée Marmottan Monet is home to the largest collection of the works of the painter Claude Monet. It features a collection of art ranging 700 years, from the 13th century to the 20th century, with over three hundred Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by Claude Monet. In addition, it houses the Wildenstein Collection of illuminated manuscripts and the Jules and Paul Marmottan collection of Napoleonic era art and furniture as well as Italian and Flemish primitive paintings.

Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet

The National Museum of Asian Arts - Guimet is an Asian art museum located in Paris , inaugurated in 1889. It bears the name of Émile Guimet, an industrialist and scholar from Lyon who, thanks to his travels, brings together important collections of Asian art objects. It brings together, over an area of ​​4000 m², many masterpieces of this continent. Some of the museum's artifacts were collected from Southeast Asia by French authorities during the colonial period.

Musée National Picasso-Paris

The Picasso Museum is the French national museum dedicated to the life and work of Pablo Picasso and the artists who were linked to him. It was housed in the Hotel Sale, one of the mansions baroque of the Marais. It has more than 5,000 works and 200,000 archival items. By its quality, its size, and the diversity of artistic fields represented, it is the biggest collection in the world of Picasso's work.

National Museum of Natural History Paris

National Museum of Natural History is the national natural history museum of France which was part of the Sorbonne Universities Founded during the French Revolution. Along with being a museum, the institution has always been also a leading research center. Since its foundation, the Museum has worked, in the fields of natural and human sciences, toward the following missions: conducting fundamental and applied research, preserving and building up its collections, teaching and training, providing

Palace of Versailles

The Palace of Versailles is an opulent complex and former royal residence outside of Paris. It was a simple hunting lodging and later a small château with a moat occupied the site until 1661. The Palace was stripped of all its furnishings after the French Revolution, but many pieces have been returned and many of the palace rooms have been restored. The Palace of Versailles has been listed as a World Heritage Site for 30 years and is one of the greatest achievements in French 17th century art.

Paris Museum of Modern Art

Paris Museum of Modern Art is a major municipal museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art of the 20th and 21st centuries, Set in the east wing of the Palais de Tokyo, a sober 1930s monument, the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art of Paris exhibits 10,000 with the seal of eclecticism, satisfying anyone interested in greater contemporary creation. It features several artistic movements of the twentieth century, focusing especially on the Cubism and Fauvism movements.

Quai Branly Museum

A beautiful museum which was located in Paris that was featuring the indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. It has a collection of around 300,000 arts which was extremely diverse, both in terms of its regions and its contents. It is a place that is unique and strange, poetic and unsettling. It serves as both a museum and as a center for research.

The Army Museum

The Army Museum in Paris, created in 1905, is one of the biggest museums of military art and history in the world. It's Contemporary Department retraces the story of the French Army from the period 1871 to 1945 and thus covers both World Wars. It extends over 8,000 m² and is made up of a museum and two churches with some 500,000 objects. The museum's seven main spaces and departments contain collections that span the period from antiquity through the 20th century.

Map of Museums to explore in Île-de-France