Musée de l'Orangerie Tickets: Time Slot and How to See Monet's Water Lilies

People go to the Musée de l'Orangerie for two oval rooms, and the ticket should match how long you plan to sit in them. Booking a time slot online costs €12.50, while the desk is cheaper at €11 but only sells what is left on the day.

Reserve your hour on the official site for €12.50, which is the safest way in and the one the sales page itself recommends, except for members. The desk price of €11 is lower by a small margin, and that saving is not worth turning up at an hour that has sold out. Partners such as GetYourGuide sometimes list timed tickets when the official site is full, though without refunds.

The combined ticket with the Orsay costs €20 and is sold only at the Orangerie desk, not online. It comes out cheaper than €16 plus €12.50 bought separately, and the saving is real if both museums are on your list. Entry is free on the first Sunday of the month, with a booking.

The same ticket covers the permanent collection, the Water Lilies and the temporary exhibition; the audio guide is collected at the museum.

When to come

The museum is open Wed–Mon 9 am–6 pm, closed Tuesdays, and the last entry is at 5:15 pm. Besides Tuesdays it is shut on 1 May, on the morning of 14 July and on 25 December. The quietest time is 9 am, right when the doors open, and the crowd peaks between 11 am and 2 pm, then thins out after 3 pm.

A temporary show called Monet, painting time opened on 30 September and runs to 25 January 2027, and the same ticket covers it. Vija Celmins stays until 15 February 2027, so the programme changes more often than the two rooms that give the museum its reputation. Plan the slot for the morning, before the first groups arrive, and keep the exhibition for the end.

The two oval rooms are on the ground floor, and together they hold eight panels, each two metres high, with 91 metres of canvas in all. The first room leans green and yellow, the light of morning and afternoon. The second is darker, blue and violet, the colours of dusk, with willows hanging over the water.

Daylight comes through the roof, so the paintings change as the hour does. Benches stand in the middle of both rooms. Take one and switch off the flash. Most visitors leave after five minutes, and twenty minutes on the bench changes what you see, because the colours shift as your eyes adjust to the light from above.

Downstairs the museum turns into a different place, with the Walter-Guillaume collection hung in smaller rooms where Cézanne and Renoir anchor the walls and Matisse and Picasso follow close behind. Count on 30 to 45 minutes here.

It is easy to rush this level just after spending all your attention upstairs. Rousseau, Modigliani and Soutine hang here too, and they reward a person who arrives with energy left. That is the argument for seeing the Orangerie before the Orsay, while your eyes are still fresh.

MuseumsThe Orangerie is one of five museums in the museum guide, and the Orsay and the Rodin are the obvious next steps.Museums in Paris →

When you only have an hour

Plan for one to one and a half hours in all, or 20 to 30 minutes if only the Water Lilies matter.

• Book the 9 am slot and go straight to the two oval rooms.
• Sit on the bench in the second room and give it a full 20 minutes.
• Go down to the Walter-Guillaume collection only if time is left.
• Walk out through the Jardin des Tuileries, with the Place de la Concorde behind you.

3 daysThe Tuileries lead on foot towards the Louvre or across the river to the Orsay, and the itinerary shows how to string them together.Paris in 3 days →