Musée Zadkine

This is one of the most intimate museums in Paris, a rare peaceful, almost secret corner where you can also get a good dose of modern art. The former studio of Russian-born Cubist sculptor Ossip Zadkine was converted into a museum in 1932, and has always had a particular charm, conserving the spirit of the place where the sculptor and his wife, painter Valentine Prax, lived for more than 40 years. A renovation and re-opening in autumn 2012 has cemented and invigorated this success.

The reception area is complete with a traditional samovar providing tea for visitors; beyond this is a procession of small light-filled rooms, all glass ceilings and dark wood floors, white walls and fittings. The sculptures in wood, stone, plaster and clay are given new life in this fresh new setting (particularly ‘Rebecca’, a large sculpture of a water-carrier that's bathed in natural light). There’s barely a wink to Valentine Prax, just a solitary canvas hung at the head of a staircase: Zadkine is the master of this place, dominated by his angular portraits, and women’s bodies carved out of tree trunks in African-inspired elliptical forms. Don’t miss the garden planted with stylised bronze statues (including the famous ‘Monument à la Ville détruite de Rotterdam’), to extend your experience of avant-garde Montparnasse which, in Zadkine’s time, was the haunt of Amedeo Modigliani, Blaise Cendrars and Arthur Miller.