About Musée d'Orsay
Before Monet, trains passed through here. The Orsay building was a railway station built between 1898 and 1900 to receive the crowds of the World's Fair, and the central nave still looks like a gare. The great clock designed by Victor Laloux, one of the architects, still presides over the hall as if someone were about to miss a train.
The collection runs from 1848 to 1914, the exact slice of history in which Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Van Gogh and Berthe Morisot turned painting upside down. The museum opened in December 1986 and is far easier to digest than the Louvre, which makes it the best choice for anyone with just one afternoon for museums.
