Old Train Station and Retired Orangery

Musee D'Orsay

Saturday was the Musee D’Orsay! We had twice tried to visit the museum, the first time it was closed due to a strike, and the second time it had a queue almost as big as the Louvre queue before it had even opened!

Some clever person found a pre-purchasable ticket online that allowed access to the D’Orsay and L’Orangerie museums for cheaper than normal, which also allowed us to skip the ‘no ticket pleb’ queues! We still had to wait a bit, but it wasn’t long.

The Musee D’Orsay is a modern museum in an old train station. Its awesome! No photography is allowed so I’ve pinched some pictures from elsewhere. I mainly wanted to go to see the van Gogh paintings, which were incredible, but we found many many others that were just as good. Being slightly smaller than the Louvre (hah) and a great architectural statement means its slightly less ‘artwhelming’ by which I mean you can actually look at the majority of the art before getting that glazed art overload expression where you cannot tell surrealism from impressionism.

Water lilies inside Musee L'Orangerie

From the left (south) bank of the Seine we crossed to the right (north) bank to visit its sister museum L’Orangerie. Originally an orangery (hence the name), it was converted into an art gallery which include eight massive water lilies by Claude Monet (since 1927). These are displayed in two separate oval shaped rooms, with a painting on each wall. Huge skylights let defused light into the room (as per the artists request), giving the rooms a blurred look (much like the paintings they contain). Down below there are more artworks but we were thoroughly overloaded by this point.