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Paris Pass Museums & Sightseeing

THE PETIT PALAIS
Paris’ Other Fine Art Museum

The Petit Palais (small palace) officially the Musée de Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, unlike its much more famous and familiar French art gallery museum brother, The Louvre, never actually was a palace, at least in the royal sense, as it was born well after the revolution which turned France into the land of egalité and fraternité. Built in 1900 for the Paris World's Fair ten years after the 1889 fair that brought Eiffel's iconic Tower to Paris as a monument to the revolt, the Petit Palais became the city’s official Museum of Fine Arts in 1902.

As its name implies, the Petit Palais is smaller and more intimate than the Louvre, and joyfully far less crowded. An art lovers visit here is relaxed and maybe a little bit more fun, too. More tlike looking at art in a mansion living-room rather than museum. The building itself is a magnificently beautiful structure of classic revival architecture with grand halls and staircases of parti-colored marble and parquet. Unlike the Louvre, whose collections do not include the more famous French artists of the 19th Century Impressionist period (see Collections of the Louvre), at the Petit Palais you can find Monet, Renoir, Delacroix and Cezanne alongside the Rembrandts of the Renaissance, Medieval religious icons and objects d’art from antiquity to the early 20th Century “beaux-arts” grand Parisian style. Here you can also find master art furnishings in a palace like setting, and some more whimsical displays, like a artist as he might be workjing on his masterpiece in the Franceh countryside. The beautiful court garden (Le Jardin de Petit Palace) a relaxing inner sanctum, has been re-opened after a long renovation, with statues of nude Diana's among the fauna and architectural frills.

Minus the tourist crowds, also unlike the Louvre, admission to the Petit Palais is our favorite price - free, except for the special temporary exhibitions. The museum offers lectures, workshops and story-telling programs for adults and children, open every day from 10am to 6pm. Entrance to the museum is from the pure photo opportunity grand stairway on Avenue Winston Churchill, directly across from the Grand Palais between the Seine River where the Pont Alexandre bridge crosses from the Invalides (See Napoleon Tomb and Army Museum) and the Champs-Elysée. The closest metro stop is the Champs-Elysée Clemenceau station. ©Bargain Travel Europe

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Petit Palais Musée de Beaux-Arts

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See Also:

NOT ALL THE ART IN PARIS IS IN MUSEUMS
But most of it is at the Louvre

RODIN MUSEUM PARIS

CONVENIENT PARIS HOTELS OPERA

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