Musée Marmottan Monet

The Musée Marmottan Monet is the Impressionist museum that many visitors miss, and the one that rewards them most. Set in a former hunting lodge on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, it holds the largest collection of Claude Monet's work anywhere, including Impression, Sunrise, the 1872 painting that gave the movement its name. Smaller and calmer than the Orsay, it also has works by Berthe Morisot and a fine collection of Empire-style furniture. It is a perfect companion to a Giverny trip or the Orangerie's Water Lilies.

Tucked away in the residential 16th arrondissement near the Ranelagh gardens, the Musée Marmottan Monet occupies a mansion that began as a hunting lodge and was later the home of the art historian and collector Paul Marmottan, who left it to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1932. It opened as a museum shortly afterward, with a collection of Empire furniture, paintings and decorative arts that still forms part of the visit. The Monet collection transformed it: in 1966 Monet's son Michel bequeathed the works that had remained in the artist's family, and the museum has been the world's great Monet repository ever since.

The star is Impression, Sunrise, the small harbor scene of Le Havre painted in 1872. When it was shown in 1874, a critic mocked the group of artists as mere Impressionists, a label that stuck and became a movement. Seeing it in person, soft, hazy and unfinished-looking, is one of those moments where art history becomes tangible. Around it hang dozens of Monet's later works, including the Water Lilies, the Japanese bridge, the weeping willows and the Houses of Parliament, tracing how his style grew looser and more abstract in his last years.

The museum also showcases other Impressionists. Berthe Morisot, one of the movement's key figures, is represented by a substantial group of works, and there are paintings by Renoir, Degas, Manet, Sisley and Pissarro, many from the collection of the doctor and patron Georges de Bellio. Downstairs, the Empire rooms with their gilded furniture, clocks and small bronzes show how a wealthy collector lived in the early 19th century, and a collection of medieval illuminated manuscripts adds a surprising extra.

Practically, the Marmottan is easy to enjoy: it is much less crowded than the big museums, the galleries are intimate, and a visit takes a comfortable ninety minutes to two hours. It is a short walk from La Muette metro and the Bois de Boulogne, so you can combine it with a stroll in the park or a coffee in the neighborhood. A skip-the-line ticket keeps the entry simple, and the museum has a weekly closing day, so check the schedule before you go.

Because the Marmottan is small, it works as a satisfying half-day excursion rather than a marathon. Start with the lower-level Monet galleries while you are fresh, then climb to the upper rooms for the Morisot and the other Impressionists before finishing with the Empire furniture. Afterwards, the nearby Ranelagh gardens and the Bois de Boulogne make a pleasant walk, and the neighborhood has quiet cafés and bakeries.

Anyone planning a Giverny day trip will enjoy visiting here first, since the Marmottan shows the late paintings that grew directly out of the garden you are about to see.