Paint the City: Two Days of Art in Paris

Drop your bags at your hotel and get your bearings. The Left Bank puts you within easy walking distance of both the Orsay and the Tuileries — a good base for the day ahead.

The former Gare d'Orsay is one of the world's great art buildings even before you look at a single canvas. Inside, the Impressionist rooms on the upper level — Monet, Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh — reward a focused two-hour visit far more than a frantic sweep of every floor. Arrive when doors open to move at your own pace.

A short walk from the Orsay, this Saint-Germain address has the lived-in confidence of a place that doesn't need to try too hard. Pull up a seat and fuel up — the afternoon still has a lot of art in it.

From Saint-Germain it's a pleasant ten-minute walk to the Luxembourg gardens and the Fontaine Médicis — a narrow, ivy-framed reflecting pool that Parisians treat as an outdoor reading room. It's a contemplative pause between two intense museum visits.

The sculptor Aristide Maillol spent his career rethinking the human form, and this intimate mansion museum on the rue de Grenelle holds a concentrated survey of his bronzes alongside rotating exhibitions. The scale feels human rather than monumental — exactly right after the grandeur of the Orsay.

One of the great wine-focused bars in Paris, Willi's sits in the Palais-Royal quarter and has spent decades assembling a list that genuinely rewards curiosity. The famous annual poster commissions line the walls — art, even here.

Start Day 2 with a quick, excellent breakfast before heading north toward Montmartre.

Before the Louvre, warm your eye at this respected gallery in the Marais — Karsten Greve represents a roster of heavyweight twentieth-century and contemporary artists, and the exhibitions change regularly. A focused thirty minutes here sharpens the way you'll look at everything else today.

Rather than attempting the whole museum, pick one or two wings and own them. The Richelieu wing's Flemish masters or the Denon wing's Italian paintings each justify a two-hour morning on their own. Book a timed entry in advance, arrive through the Richelieu passage to avoid the pyramid scrum, and leave before exhaustion sets in.

A proper Les Halles lunch at this classic brasserie, close to the Louvre, is the right reset after a morning of art. The room is convivial and the cooking is unapologetically French — hearty, seasonal, no fuss.

An afternoon in the Marais at the MEP, one of Europe's most serious photography institutions. The building itself — an eighteenth-century hôtel particulier fused with a contemporary extension — is as much a draw as the rotating programme of major photographers. Plan around ninety minutes to do the current shows justice.

End the trip at this Marais staple a short walk from the MEP. The cooking has a Franco-Asian sensibility that feels genuinely considered rather than fashionable, and the room is intimate enough to make a last Parisian dinner feel like an occasion.