Museum d'Orsay is one of the best-known museums in France as well as in the whole world. It houses many French art works of the 19th-20th centuries, including paintings, sculptures, furniture and photography. The collection of the impressionist masterpieces is one of the best in the world.

The museum is situated on the left bank of the Seine River, not far from the Louvre. The building used to be a railway station Gare d'Orsay with the hotel attached to it. But in the 1939 the station was closed, and the hotel ceased to exist in 1973. The Paris government allowed to turn the building into the museum, and in 1973 Musee d'Osay was opened to general public. The museum is a home for the collection of the 19th century art as well as French avant-garde of the beginning of the 20th century. Its pride and joy are the collections of impressionist and post-impressionist painters, who felt free to create after the French academy lost its total control over the French art in the revolutionary year of 1848.

There is a wonderful selection of works by such revolutionary painters as Manet, Millet and Courbet. Manet, one of the founders of the Impressionism, is represented by his famous and scandalous "Dejeuner sur l'Herbe"(1863) and "Olympia"(1863). Courbet's two monumental canvases, the Funeral at Ornans (1851) and The Painter's Studio (1855) hang opposite each other. Millet is also represented by his best works.

Impressionist and Post Impressionist galleries on the top floor have always attracted much attention. Many of the pictures hanging there need no introduction. The names of the artists are famous to everyone: Manet, Renoir, Monet, Renoir, Callebotte, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Degas and Cezanne...more than enough to enrapture an art admirer!

If you get tired of exploring the galleries, go to the cosy café upstairs. After a well-earned rest, it is worth going on to subsequent work by more esoteric artists - the symbolists Redon and Moreau are well represented. There are also marvellous darkened rooms devoted to pastel drawings - Manet and Degas made particularly beautiful examples.

More compact and manageable than the Louvre, the d'Orsay benefits greatly from the huge iron-clad atrium that hangs over it, flooding the paintings with natural light. With the whole building brilliantly remodelled by architect Gae Aulenti in the 1980s, it is a joy to visit.

Muse d'Orsay is situated at Rue de Lille, 62. It is open daily except Monday from 9.30am to 6pm (until 9.45pm Thu). The entrance ticket costs €7.50; concessions €5.50; under 18s free; free first Sun of every month.

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