Giverny and the Orangerie Museum : the Water Lilies world

Presentation

For this unique tour, we propose you to discover the gardens of Giverny designed by Claude Monet and to enter the poetic world of the Water Lilies (Nympéas), masterpiece entirely inspired by the Water garden. Discover the most important artistic testimony of the famous painter: a monumental work about 100m displays in 2 oval rooms. Surrounded by 360° of this aquatic nature, the impression of immersion is absolute.

This tour mixes the calm of the Norman countryside (Giverny) and the effervescence of the Parisian life (Orangerie Museum).

We offer you exceptional services with a private guide and a private driver.

Here, Claude Monet in his studio painting his magisterial Nympheas

1. What are you going to see?

• Claude Monet’s House and Gardens

• Masterpiece of the Water lilies in the Orangerie Museum

2. Why you will like it

• Exceptional tour mixing the calm of the Norman countryside and the effervescence of the Parisian life

• Private tour for your half-day excursion

• Premium and comfortable car with a private driver

• Pick up and drop off at your hotel

• Expert and friendly guide passionate by the Impressionism

• Direct access tickets for Monet’s house and gardens and in the Orangerie Museum without queuing up

• A convivial moment with your guide

3. Sum up and important information

Opening of the Claude Monet Foundation: daily from 25^th of March till 1^st of November. 9:30 am – 6 pm, last entry at 5:30pm.

Opening of the Orangerie Museum : daily except Tuesday, 1^st May, the morning of 14 July and the 25 December. 9am – 6 pm, last entry at 5:15 pm.

• Time : 5 hours and a half

• Timetable : in the morning : 8am – 1:30pm OR in the afternoon : 2:00 pm – 7:30 pm

• Language : English

• Number of people: as you wish, ideally from 2 to 17 persons

• Disabled person : let us know so that we do the best we can

The tour progress :

Your private driver and your guide pick you up at your hotel, in Paris or nearby, at 8am or 2pm (according to the timetable you choose). During our trip, your friendly guide introduces himself and does a quick introduction of what you are going to see and do (1 hour and 20 minutes from Paris to Giverny by car).

At Giverny, we have a direct access to the place without having to queue up and there starts our discovery of the wonderful gardens. Let us walk around the flowery Water Garden (Jardin d’Eau) and Walled Garden (Clos Normand). The profusion of those colored masses gives birth to true paintings.

Before exit, we visit last Monet’s sky-light studio where he painted his water lilies masterpieces you are going to discover thereafter… Today, it has been transformed into a gift shop where we can look around.

After our visit of Monet’s house and garden, we come to join our driver to go back to Paris.

In Paris, let’s discover together the Orangerie Museum. The Museum is located in the very heart of the capital between the gardens of Le Louvre and the Seine river. We continue our discoveries entering in two consecutive oval rooms flooded with natural light setting out the Water Lilies. Surrounded by 360° of this aquatic nature, the impression of immersion is absolute. This masterpiece has been entirely inspired by the Water Garden you visited at Giverny previously. It is obvious!

Live a timeless moment and let yourself carried away by the poetic Monet’s world with your guide.

Encadré : At the end of his life, Monet thinks about executing a colossal work as a dream of the aquatic garden you just visited. Monet has been focusing on the Nymphéas cycle for 30 years.

After the World War I, Monet bequeaths his last Water lilies painting to the French Nation as a symbol of peace. It fell to his friend Clemenceau, an eminent political personality of that time, after Monet’s death, to inaugurate the Water Lilies paintings at the Orangerie in 1927. Let our eyes wander over the majestic landscapes of water. We are elated by such subtle blends of colors.

We notice that some canvases have reddish and yellowish strokes, almost violent. In 1912, Monet began to go blind with cataracts. His troubles of vision altered the colors he perceived, and the motif is less precise, close to abstraction. Indeed, he is nowadays considered as a precursor of abstraction and later he inspired by Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell and leading figures of the Abstract expressionism movement in the United States.

We feel renewed after such an immersion and we reach back our hotel in total happiness (at 1:30 pm or 7:30 pm regarding to the timetable you chose).