The 19 best museums in Paris

When it opened in 2002, many thought the Palais’s stripped-back interior was a design statement. In fact, it was a response to tight finances. The 1937 building has now come into its own as an open-plan space with a skylit central hall, hosting exhibitions and performances. Extended hours and a funky café have drawn a younger audience, and the roll-call of contemporary artists is impressive (Pierre Joseph, Wang Du and others). The name dates to the 1937 Exposition Internationale, but is also a reminder of links with a new generation of artists from the Far East.

Housing the Paris chamber of commerce, this trade centre for coffee and sugar was built as a grain market in 1767. The circular building was then covered by a wooden dome, replaced by an avant-garde iron structure in 1809. The building was mentioned in the 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo. 

The Fondation Louis Vuitton modern art gallery opened in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris’s second largest public park, in October 2014. Designed by architect Frank Gehry, the impressive new space plays host to Louis Vuitton Group CEO Bernard Arnault’s art collection. Visually stunning, the FLV is shell-shaped and made up of twelve glass sails that soar above the park's greenery. Inside is a huge auditorium and 3,850m2 of exhibition space divided into eleven galleries; comparatively modest next to Gehry’s Guggenheim museum in Bilbao.

It takes a lot to rival the iconic historic landmarks of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, but Centre Pompidou's primary colours, exposed pipes and air ducts make it one of the best-known sights in the French capital. Known to locals as simply ‘Beaubourg’ because of its location, Pompidou's modern art collection is the largest in Europe, rivalled only in breadth and quality by MoMA in New York. When it first opened in 1977, the idea of combining a modern art museum, library, exhibition and performance space and cinema in one multi-purpose complex was revolutionary, but it paved the way for most art institutions around the world.

If you like art that leaves an impression, then the Musée D'Orsay is a must. Housed in a former train station, the collection includes all of the Impressionist and Post-impressionist movements' big hitters – Monet, Renoir, van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec – as well as some dapper decorative arts from the Art Nouveau era and a wide range of 19th-century sculpture. Be sure to visit the café and watch time go by (literally) on the museum's giant transparent clockface.

The world’s largest and most visited museum needs no introduction, but here's one anyway. Established in 1793, the Louve has grown into a city within a city – a vast, multi-level maze of galleries, passageways, staircases and escalators, all topped with its iconic pyramid roof. While a lot of its 10 million annual visitors make a bee-line for a certain famous lady – hello Mona Lisa – there are more than 35,000 works of art and artefacts to see once you've got the side-eye from da Vinci's most famous creation. Be sure to check the website or lists in the Carrousel du Louvre to see which galleries are closed on certain days to avoid missing out on what you want to see.

On the other side of the road from the Grand Palais, you’ll find the Petit Palais. Although this institution was also built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, it’s fondly known as the Grand Palais’s younger sibling. Behind its Belle Époque exterior visitors can cast their eyes on some of the city’s most wonderful fine art and sculptures, including work by Poussin, Doré, Courbet and the Impressionists. Art Nouveau fans are in for a treat downstairs, where you’ll find jewellery and knick-knacks by Belle Époque biggies Lalique and Galle.

Taken as a whole (alongside the Musée de la Mode et du Textile), this is one of the world’s major collections of design and the decorative arts. Located in the west wing of the Louvre for almost a century, the venue reopened in 2006 after a decade-long, €35 million restoration of the building and of 6,000 of the 150,000 items donated mainly by private collectors. The focus here is French furniture and tableware, but from extravagant carpets to delicate crystal and porcelain, there’s almost too much to admire. Of most appeal to the layman? The reconstructed period rooms, 10 in all, showing how the other (French) half lived from the late 15th century to the early 20th.

The Orangerie is home to eight, tapestry-sized ‘Nymphéas’ (water lilies) paintings. Housed in two plain oval rooms, the sparse setting allows visitors to immerse themselves fully in the astonishing, ethereal romanticism of Monet’s works. There's more to the Orangerie than Monet though. Downstairs, you'll find works by Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse and Picasso, while the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection of Impressionism is worth a detour.

The Centre National de la Photographie's Tuileries gardens location makes it the ideal second stop after a trip to the Louvre or Orsay. Although the two white, almost hangar-like galleries don't make it an intimate space, it works well for showcase retrospectives. Downstairs in the basement, you'll find a video art and cinema suite that shows new digital installation work, as well as feature-length films made by artists. Its café and bookshop are well worth a visit in their own right, too.