5 Art Museums in France that are Better Than the Louvre

1. Villa de Rothschild: Part museum, part life-sized doll’s house, this is every girl’s childhood dream realized. Around 1905, Beatrice de Rothschild, member of a wealthy family and wife to a wealthy husband, decided that she wanted a place to house her art collection, porcelain, costumes, and dolls. She decorated the mansion in pink, lace, and vibrant fabrics, and the house boasts a costume room, a tearoom, her bedroom, and nine gardens wrapping around a giant courtyard, each garden representing a different part of the world. The entire structure is designed to look like the bow of a ship so that she could have the illusion that she was traveling forever.

Villa de Rothschild

2. Matisse Chapel: When Henri Matisse was living in the south of France, he became very ill and received care from a group of nuns. To show his gratitude, he designed a private chapel for them, a little while structure hidden away in the hills along the French Riviera. Typical of his minimalist design, the chapel is unusual in its modernity and simplicity, without any of the elaborate or medieval adornments that we are used to seeing in houses of worship. Visiting the chapel is a unique experience that will offer the traveler an intimate interaction with a selection of Matisse’s work that cannot be found in a museum corridor.

Matisse Chapel

3. Picasso Museum: Located in castle along the coast of Antibes, this museum is home to the series of works that Picasso created while living in that very building for several months. The family living there at the time allowed him to use the top floor of the building as his studio, and to show his gratitude he left all of the work he created there to the family after he left. The museum is now open to the public and includes the famous painting Joie de Vivre. Along with the paintings and sculptures throughout the castle, the structure’s patio also offers a gorgeous view of the Mediterranean.

Picasso Museum

4. Giverny: When a museum full of artwork just isn’t enough, head out to a museum that includes both the artwork and the gorgeous gardens that inspired it. Monet designed the entire garden himself, and visitors are able to traverse the bridge that appears in so many of his water lilies paintings. The house that still stands on the property has been preserved to resemble the way it was decorated at the time that Monet lived there with his family and includes prints of the artworks that he created there, as well as prints of the Japanese artwork that inspired many of his paintings.


5. Musee D’Orsay: Unlike many of the museums listed above, most people have heard of the Musee D’Orsay, but it always seems to be a second choice after the Louvre. Housed in a former train station, this museum has a visually interesting, open floor plan. Its collection focuses on modern trends rather than antiquity or the classical masters, which can all start to look the same after an hour. Many of the world’s most famous works are housed here, like Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe, Olympia, The Gleaners, A Burial at Ornans, and several works by the Impressionist painters.

Musee D’Orsay

About the Author: Jackie DesForges is a writer from Los Angeles currently living in Chicago. To date she has served as a student ambassador in England and France, a volunteer in Mexico, an art student on the Riviera, and a fledgling travel writer in Edinburgh. Currently she spends her time blogging about travels past and present at Misadventures of Travelgirl and saving her pennies for her next great adventure overseas. You can follow Jackie on Twitter at @jackie_travels.