My favorite museum in the whole world. You will not be disappointed, especially if you like the impressionist painters. Lots of great sculpture too, and the building is beautiful. A good place to have an elegant, but relatively inexpensive, lunch.

The D'Orsay was built in 1898 as a railroad station. It was used only for a brief amount of time as a train station – by the time of World War II it was not able to accommodate the longer trains. It fell into disrepair, but was restored in 1979 to house artistic works covering the period between 1848 and 1914. The first two photos show the exterior of the museum. Photo 3 does look a little like the inside of a train station. Photo 4 shows a beautiful clock. Photo 5 shows a sample of the wall ornaments - there are thousands like these. The last photo shows the spaciousness of the museum with Thomas Couture's Romans de la Decadence in the background.

Not only does the museum has a vast amount of impressionist paintings, as illustrated by photo 1 which shows a Renoir painting, it has lots of amazing sculpture. The second photo shows a Renoir and the last two show some of Gauguin's work.

I forgot to note who did the following sculptures.

Below are two more of my favorite sculptures: the first by Paul Dubois and the second by Charles Condier. Also shown below is a sample piece of furniture and a stained glass window.

9 Opéra de Paris Garnier

The Opera House was built for Napoleon III from a design submitted by Charles Garnier in 1860. The construction took 15 years and before it was completed, Napoleon III was no longer in power. It would have cost over a billion dollars to build in terms of today's money.