Musee de l'Orangerie

Recently reopened after extensive renovations, this small museum near the Louvre houses the ''Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection'', sold to the French Republic on very generous terms and numbering 143 paintings from the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century (15 Cézannes, 24 Renoirs, 10 Matisses, 12 Picassos, 28 Derains, 22 Soutines... ). The collection joined the eight immense ''Water Lilies'' that Monet gave France in 1922 and which have been displayed since 1927 in two huge oval rooms purpose-built on the artist's instructions.