The 24 best museums in Paris

It takes a lot to rival the iconic historic landmarks of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, but Centre Pompidou's primary colours, exposed pipes and air ducts make it one of the best-known sights in the French capital. Known to locals as simply ‘Beaubourg’ because of its location, Pompidou's modern art collection is the largest in Europe, rivalled only in breadth and quality by MoMA in New York. When it first opened in 1977, the idea of combining a modern art museum, library, exhibition and performance space and cinema in one multi-purpose complex was revolutionary, but it paved the way for most art institutions around the world.

Don't get confused by the name. This ‘arts and crafts’ museum is, in fact, Europe’s oldest science museum. Founded in 1794 by constitutional bishop Henri Grégoire, it was initially a means to educate France’s manufacturing industry in useful scientific techniques. It became a museum proper in 1819, and has been wowing visitors with its vast, fascinating and attractively laid out collection of treasures for more than two centuries. Highlights include Pascal’s calculating devices, an enormous 1938 TV set, scale models of buildings and machines that must have required at least as much engineering skill as the originals, and the world's first powered vehicle – Cugnot’s 1770 ‘Fardier’.

The living walls of the Musée du Quai Branly are worth the short walk along the Seine from the Eiffel Tower alone, but it's what is inside that will keep you there for hours. A vast showcase for non-European art and culture, it brings together the collections of the Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie and the Laboratoire d’Ethnologie du Musée de l’Hommethere in rooms dedicated to art from Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Americas. Treasures include a 10th-century anthropomorphic Dogon statue from Mali, Vietnamese costumes, Gabonese masks, Aztec statues, Peruvian feather tunics and rare frescoes from Ethiopia.

The Centre National de la Photographie's Tuileries gardens location makes it the ideal second stop after a trip to the Louvre or Orsay. Although the two white, almost hangar-like galleries don't make it an intimate space, it works well for showcase retrospectives. Downstairs in the basement, you'll find a video art and cinema suite that shows new digital installation work, as well as feature-length films made by artists. Its café and bookshop are well worth a visit in their own right, too.

Sculptor Antoine Bourdelle was a big deal in the late 1800s and early 20th century. A pupil of Rodin, the Frenchman produced a number of monumental works including the Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky–inspired modernist relief friezes at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. This museum is dedicated to the artist's life and his apartment and studios take centre stage. Two further wings have been added since Bourdelle's death in 1929, and each explores his work in even greater detail – including his various bronze studies of Beethoven in different guises.

The world’s largest and most visited museum needs no introduction, but here's one anyway. Established in 1793, the Louve has grown into a city within a city – a vast, multi-level maze of galleries, passageways, staircases and escalators, all topped with its iconic pyramid roof. While a lot of its 10 million annual visitors make a bee-line for a certain famous lady – hello Mona Lisa – there are more than 35,000 works of art and artefacts to see once you've got the side-eye from da Vinci's most famous creation. Be sure to check the website or lists in the Carrousel du Louvre to see which galleries are closed on certain days to avoid missing out on what you want to see.

If you like art that leaves an impression, then the Musée D'Orsay is a must. Housed in a former train station, the collection includes all of the Impressionist and Post-impressionist movements' big hitters – Monet, Renoir, van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec – as well as some dapper decorative arts from the Art Nouveau era and a wide range of 19th-century sculpture. Be sure to visit the café and watch time go by (literally) on the museum's giant transparent clockface.

The Orangerie is home to eight, tapestry-sized ‘Nymphéas’ (water lilies) paintings. Housed in two plain oval rooms, the sparse setting allows visitors to immerse themselves fully in the astonishing, ethereal romanticism of Monet’s works. There's more to the Orangerie than Monet though. Downstairs, you'll find works by Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse and Picasso, while the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection of Impressionism is worth a detour.

While the Musée de l'Orangerie is home to his tapestries, it's this former hunting pavilion on the edges of Bois de Boulogne that lays claim to the largest Monet collection in the world. Originally a museum of the Empire period left to the state by collector Paul Marmottan, a donation by Monet's son Michel in 1966 meant it added 165 of the Impressionist artist's works, plus sketchbooks, palettes and photos overnight. Other gems in its collection include works by Renoir, Manet, Gauguin, Caillebotte and Berthe Morisot, 15th-century primitives and a Sèvres clock.

The huge, sprawling galleries of the Grand Palais were originally constructed for the Exposition Universelle of 1900 – so it’s no surprise this place is the definition of grand. The exterior is in the Beaux-Arts style and dominated by an eye-catching steel-framed glass roof. In recent years it has put on huge exhibitions on the likes of Irving Penn, Marc Chagall and Paul Gauguin.

Put together by Count Moïse de Camondo, this collection is named after his son Nissim, who was killed during the First World War. Moïse replaced the family’s two houses near Parc Monceau with this palatial residence and lived here in a style in keeping with his love of the 18th century. Grand first-floor reception rooms are filled with furniture by craftsmen of the Louis XV and XVI eras, silver services, Sèvres and Meissen porcelain, Savonnerie carpets and Aubusson tapestries.

Taken as a whole (alongside the Musée de la Mode et du Textile), this is one of the world’s major collections of design and the decorative arts. Located in the west wing of the Louvre for almost a century, the venue reopened in 2006 after a decade-long, €35 million restoration of the building and of 6,000 of the 150,000 items donated mainly by private collectors. The focus here is French furniture and tableware, but from extravagant carpets to delicate crystal and porcelain, there’s almost too much to admire. Of most appeal to the layman? The reconstructed period rooms, 10 in all, showing how the other (French) half lived from the late 15th century to the early 20th.

This wonderful museum combines the small private apartment of Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau with the vast gallery he built to display his work – laid out as a museum by the painter himself, and opened in 1903. Downstairs shows his obsessive collecting tendencies through family portraits, Grand Tour souvenirs and a boudoir devoted to the object of his unrequited love, Alexandrine Dureux. Upstairs is Moreau’s fantasy realm, which plunders Greek mythology and biblical scenes for canvases filled with writhing maidens, trance-like visages, mystical beasts and strange plants. Don’t miss the trippy masterpiece ‘Jupiter et Sémélé’ on the second floor. Printed on boards you can carry around the museum are the artist’s lengthy, rhetorical and frankly pretty wild commentaries.

Many of the exhibits here seem more suited to an art gallery than a museum. The history of hunting and humankind’s broader relationships with the natural world are examined in things like a quirky series of wooden cabinets devoted to the owl, wolf, boar and stag, each equipped with a bleached skull, small drawers you can open to reveal droppings and footprint casts, and a binocular eyepiece you can peer into for footage of the animal in the wild. A cleverly simple mirrored box contains a stuffed hen that is replicated to infinity on every side; and a stuffed fox is set curled up on a Louis XVI chair as though it were a domestic pet. Thought-provoking stuff.

Opened in 2007, this architecture and heritage museum impresses principally because of its scale (massive). The expansive ground floor is filled with life-size mock-ups of cathedral façades and heritage buildings, with interactive screens that place the models in context. Upstairs, darkened rooms house full-scale copies of medieval and Renaissance murals and stained-glass windows. The highlight of the modern architecture section? A walk-in replica of an apartment from Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille.

The 9th arrondissement was teeming with composers, writers and artists when Dutch artist Ary Scheffer built this small villa in 1830. The likes of Chopin and Liszt were guests at Scheffer's soirées, while novelist George Sand would also make an apperance. The museum is devoted to Sand, plus Scheffer’s paintings and other mementoes of the Romantic era. Renovated in 2013, the museum’s tree-lined courtyard café and greenhouse make for the ideal summer retreat.

On the other side of the road from the Grand Palais, you’ll find the Petit Palais. Although this institution was also built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, it’s fondly known as the Grand Palais’s younger sibling. Behind its Belle Époque exterior visitors can cast their eyes on some of the city’s most wonderful fine art and sculptures, including work by Poussin, Doré, Courbet and the Impressionists. Art Nouveau fans are in for a treat downstairs, where you’ll find jewellery and knick-knacks by Belle Époque biggies Lalique and Galle.

The Rodin museum occupies the hôtel particulier where the sculptor lived in the final years of his life. ‘The Kiss’, ‘The Cathedral’, ‘The Walking Man’, portrait busts and early terracottas are exhibited indoors, as are many of the individual figures or small groups that also appear on ‘The Gates of Hell’. Rodin’s works are accompanied by several pieces by his mistress and pupil, Camille Claudel. The walls are hung with paintings by van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Carrière and Rodin himself. Most visitors have greatest affection for the gardens: look out for ‘The Burghers of Calais‘, ‘The Gates of Hell’ and ‘The Thinker’. 

When it opened in 2002, many thought the Palais’s stripped-back interior was a design statement. In fact, it was a response to tight finances. The 1937 building has now come into its own as an open-plan space with a skylit central hall, hosting exhibitions and performances. Extended hours and a funky café have drawn a younger audience, and the roll-call of contemporary artists is impressive (Pierre Joseph, Wang Du and others). The name dates to the 1937 Exposition Internationale, but is also a reminder of links with a new generation of artists from the Far East.

Here, 140 chronological rooms depict the history of Paris, from pre-Roman Gaul to the 20th century. Built in 1548 and transformed by Mansart in 1660, this fine house became a museum in 1866, when Haussmann persuaded the city to preserve its beautiful interiors. Original 16th-century rooms house Renaissance collections, with portraits by Clouet and furniture and pictures relating to the Wars of Religion. The first floor covers the period up to 1789, with furniture and paintings displayed in restored, period interiors; neighbouring Hôtel Le Peletier de St-Fargeau covers the period from 1789 onwards. Displays relating to 1789 detail that year’s convoluted politics and bloodshed, with prints and memorabilia, including a chunk of the Bastille.

The national museum of medieval art is best known for the beautiful, allegorical Lady and the Unicorn tapestry cycle, but also has important collections of medieval sculpture and enamel. There’s also a respectable programme of medieval-themed concerts in which troubadours pay homage to the museum’s collection. The building itself, commonly known as Cluny, is a rare example of 15th-century secular Gothic architecture, with its foliate Gothic doorways, hexagonal staircase jutting from the façade and vaulted chapel. It was built from 1485 to 1498 – on top of a Gallo-Roman bathing complex. The baths, built in characteristic Roman bands of stone and brick masonry, are the finest ancient remains in Paris. 

Long terrace steps and a pair of stone lions usher visitors into this grand 19th-century mansion, home to an impressive collection of objets d’art and fine paintings. It was assembled by Edouard André and artist wife Nélie Jacquemart, using money inherited from his rich banking family. The mansion was built to order to house their hoard, which includes Rembrandts, Tiepolo frescoes and paintings by Italian masters Uccello, Mantegna and Carpaccio. The adjacent tearoom, with its fabulous tottering cakes, is a favourite with the smart lunch set.

First opened in 1985, the Musée Picasso is one of the city’s most precious and prestigious institutions. Set in the great 17th century Hôtel Salé in the heart of the historic Marais area, the world's largest collection of Picasso’s masterpieces hang on the walls of bright, spacious exhibition rooms. 

Jean Nouvel's glass and steel building, an exhibition centre with Cartier's offices above, is as much a work of art as the installations inside. Shows by artists and photographers often have wide-ranging themes, such as 'Birds' or 'Desert'. Live events around the shows are called Nuits Nomades.