Orsay Museum & Rodin Museum Combo Tickets Paris

The Musée d'Orsay, a railway station turned museum

The Musée d'Orsay occupies the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built on the Left Bank of the Seine for the World Fair of 1900. Saved from demolition, it reopened as a museum in December 1986, and its great nave under a vast glass and iron vault is one of the most beautiful museum spaces in the world, lined with 19th-century sculpture.

The collection covers art from 1848 to 1914: painting, sculpture, decorative arts and photography. Orsay Museum opening hours are Tuesday to Sunday from 09:30 to 18:00, with a late opening until 21:45 on Thursdays; the museum is closed on Mondays. With your Orsay Museum tickets you enter through the dedicated Entrance C1 on the forecourt, avoiding the main ticket line.

Impressionist masterpieces at Orsay

The highlight for most visitors is the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist galleries on the upper floor, the largest such collection anywhere. Here you stand in front of paintings by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, including Van Gogh's self-portrait with its swirling blue background and Renoir's sunlit dance scene at the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre.

Do not miss the great clock windows of the old station, which frame views across the Seine to the Louvre and the hill of Montmartre. A first visit usually takes two to three hours. Is the Orsay Museum worth visiting if you have already seen the Louvre? Yes: it is smaller and easier to explore, and it continues the story of French art exactly where the Louvre's painting collection ends.

The Musée Rodin and its sculpture garden

The Musée Rodin is set in the Hôtel Biron, an elegant mansion built between 1727 and 1732, where the sculptor Auguste Rodin worked from 1908. He donated his works to the French state on condition that the house become a museum, and it opened in 1919. Inside, the rooms display his marble and bronze works, among them The Kiss, as well as drawings and pieces from his own collection.

The garden, covering about three hectares with roses and clipped yews, is where many people fall in love with the museum. Here stand The Thinker, The Gates of Hell and The Burghers of Calais, with the golden dome of the Invalides rising above the trees. Rodin Museum opening hours are Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:30, closed on Mondays, and your ticket lets you skip the line.

Planning your museum day on the Left Bank

The two museums are about 1.3 kilometres apart in the 7th arrondissement, roughly 20 minutes on foot through the elegant streets of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. A good plan is to start at Orsay at opening time, when the galleries are quieter, have lunch nearby and spend the afternoon at the Musée Rodin and its garden, which is at its best in spring and early summer.

The tickets are valid for three months and need no time slot, so you can also visit each museum on a different day. The best time to visit both is a weekday morning outside school holidays. Orsay is reached by RER C at Musée d'Orsay station or metro line 12 at Solférino, and the Musée Rodin by metro line 13 at Varenne.