37. Paris - Musée d 'Orsay 1

You musn't visit Paris without going to Musée d'Orsay. 

The Orsay is on the left bank of the Seine, opposite the Tuileries, and is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, an impressive Beaux-Arts railway station built in 1898 for the Universal Exhibition of 1900.  

Universal Exhibitions were huge affairs in the later part of the 19thC, but the 1900 Universal Exhibition was outstanding because it introduced to the world, for the first time, a number of things that we now take for granted; escalators, the Eiffel Tower, ferris wheels, Russian nesting dolls, the diesel engine, talking films and the telegraphone. 

And also, Gare d'Orsay, the beautiful station of the line Paris to Orleans.

Looking at the Orsay from the other side of the river. You can see the two large clocks, one in each tower and the original curved roof.  It is a glorious building.

The roof deck between the two clocks is always popular with spectacular views along the river.

Across the river, slightly to the right, the Tuileries lead up to the matching towers on either side of the Louvre.

The cafe fits into the Mansard roofline of the old station. The huge railway clocks are still working.

Looking at the main gallery you can reconstruct the old railway station in your mind.  The huge curved roof.  Two lines at ground level and two below.  Wide platforms.

Much of the original roof has been preserved.

Looking downwards from a very high spot at the far end of building, the whole milky marble space glows with a great luminescence.

The sculpture galleries run down the centre of the building at ground level and along the walkways on the upper level. The painting galleries are on both sides of this spine at ground level, but outside of this space, through the arches, on the right hand side on the second level.

The sculpture is mainly life-size, not overwhelmingly large.

But the main reason we all flock to the Musée d'Orsay is to see the Impressionists and the collection here is a very rich one from its origins in the 1860's to its influence throughout the twentieth century.

So here is a taster, Edouard Manet's 'Olympia' 1863

And Claude Monet's 'Femmes au garden' 1866.  

And I didn't have to sneakily snap these lovelies while the staff weren't looking - photos are now permitted without flash, so there are lots more in Part 2.