Musée de l'Orangerie

What makes it special

The Water Lilies are eight panels hung in two oval rooms on the ground floor, and together the rooms trace the sign for infinity. The walls curve, so the paintings run round you without a corner, and Monet worked on the plan of the rooms himself. Stand in the centre of each room and turn slowly, because the panels were made to be seen whole.

Look up as well. Light comes in through the ceiling, which Monet required so the paintings would be seen by daylight, and it shifts with the weather outside.

The lower level holds the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection, the paintings of the dealer Paul Guillaume and his widow, Domenica Walter, now owned by the French state. Derain and Renoir are the best represented, with Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani beside them. Rousseau, Soutine and Laurencin are among the later painters.

The building itself went up as a winter shelter for the orange trees of the Tuileries Palace garden, which is where the name comes from.

Visiting

By the time you arrive, you need a timed slot booked online: Paris Museum Pass holders and those who enter free need one too, and slots sell out quickly in peak season. Once inside, go straight to the oval rooms on the ground floor, then head down to the Walter-Guillaume collection on the lower level.

Photography without flash or a tripod is allowed in the permanent collection, but not in temporary exhibitions. The museum's own audio guide has more than a hundred and fifty commentaries on works in the collection, in French, English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and five more languages.

Tips

Be at the door at nine, when the museum opens: tour groups reach the Water Lilies by about eleven. Weekday mornings are calmer than weekends, so keep the weekend for somewhere else if your dates allow it.

The museum stands inside the Tuileries Garden, so you can walk the garden before your slot rather than wait in the entrance line. Leave the downstairs collection until after the oval rooms, when the groups start to arrive above.