Marmottan-Monet Museum

This alone being a good enough reason to visit the museum Marmottan-Monet but not only: the building is also a rare living testimony of the Empire style. Admire the chandeliers, the furniture, the decoration of the rooms (see in particular the magnificent dining room), the large staircase: all dating back from the time when the Marmottan family bought the house, a former hunting lodge and transformed it into a private bourgeois mansion.

It very quickly became dedicated to the introduction of major artistic collections: in the time of the father Jules Marmottan, who collected works from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and then later on, collections from the first Empire were introduced during the revival by his son Paul. He died in 1932, and left the house and its collections to the Academy of Fine Arts, who two years later turned it into a museum.

Since then, the collections have been constantly enriched by incredible donations:

• 11 Impressionist paintings were given in 1957 by the daughter of Georges de Bellio.
• More recently in 1996 the entire works of Berthe Morisot have been transmitted by her great-grandchildren.
• And of course, the entire collection of Claude Monet left by his son Michel in 1966, which implicated two things: the construction of a new room and the addition of the master of Impressionism name to that of the previous owner.

At the time of this mythical donation, Michel Monnet had one condition "visits must be very limited, 1 day per week and never more than 6 people at a time". A demand that the museum did not respect, to art lover’s delight.