5 must-see museums to visit in Paris in 2019

N°1 Le Louvre

It is the largest museum of art and antiques in the world, but also the most visited. Born a castle during the reign of King Philip Augustus, it is united to the Tuileries Palace, then the residence of the kings of France, under the leadership of Henry IV, at the end of the sixteenth century. If the project to make the Louvre a place of conservation of works of art was born under the reign of Louis XIV, it is only after the French Revolution that it will be transformed into a museum. More than 500,000 works are now preserved there, from Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities to Western art from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. One of the richest and most varied catalogs in the world. The essentials: Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, of course, but also Lucas Cranach's Three Graces, Theodore Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, An Odalisque by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the Venus of Milo, the Great Sphinx of Tanis , the Statue of Ain Ghazal and the Rite of Napoleon of David.

N°2 Le Musée d’Orsay

This former Parisian station has almost never become the temple of Impressionist painting, realistic and pointillist it is today. In 1973, the Musée d'Orsay was first about to raze this building built in 1900, to install a luxury hotel. Valery Giscard d'Estaing finally decided to make a museum, inaugurated in 1986, which today covers Western art from the second half of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century, a period as short as rich. He is the link between the collections of the Louvre and those of the Center Georges Pompidou. His last major news? Nine new rooms, exhibiting the works of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Bernard, Sérusier and Redon have been renovated and rethought in chronological continuity with the Impressionist Gallery. A new course that is worth a look at the 5th floor of the museum. The essentials: Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World, Edouard Manet's Breakfast on the Grass and Olympia, The Auvers-sur-Oise Church and Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night, The Galette Mill Ball d'Auguste Renoir, Gustave Caillebotte's Planers, Paul Cézanne's card players and Jean-François Millet's Gleaners.

N°3 Le Centre Georges Pompidou

An emblematic building of progressive Paris from the end of the 1970s, this architectural UFO by Renzo Piano is home to Europe's largest collection of modern art : tawny paintings, cubism, dada works, surrealism, abstract art, pop art, new realism, and many others. More than 50 000 works are conserved and regularly filmed in its rooms. One of the gravitational centers of Parisian cultural life, the Center Georges Pompidou also hosts a cinema, a library and a panoramic restaurant, the Georges, and adjoins the Stravinsky fountain, where you can admire the statues of Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely. The essentials: Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, Sylvia von Harden by Otto Dix, Man Ray's Violon by Ingres, Yellow Red Blue by Vassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso's Harlequin, SE 71, Yves Klein's tree.

4. Le Musée du Quai Branly

This immense building signed Jean Nouvel, with its green facade and its garden populated with architectural pieces, was born in 2006 under the impetus of Jacques Chirac. It has come under a lot of criticism, particularly for its astronomical cost of realization, and its post-colonialist dimension. Dedicated to the arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, it houses the old ethnological collections of the Museum of Man and the National Museum of Arts of Africa and Oceania of the Golden Gate. Note that the Musée du Quai Branly is free until 10/11/19, in honor of Jacques Chirac. Must-sees: Malian statues, masks from Gabon, Japanese prints, and objects of everyday life.

5. Le musée d’Art Moderne

Since 1961, the east wing of the Palais de Tokyo (built for the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques in 1937) houses the Museum of Modern Art in the city of Paris, devoted to major avant-garde artistic movements. Ideal to discover or rediscover cubists and post-cubists, wild animals, or painters of the School of Paris.

Must-sees: Danse de Matisse, Nude in Pierre Bonnard's Bath, Robert Delaunay's Rhythm No. 1, Raoul Dufy's La Fée Electricité, Daniel Buren's Walls of Paintings.

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