Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris

Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris Review

The Petit Palais, the city's fine art musuem, has a small, overlooked collection of excellent painting, sculpture, and objets d'art, with works by Monet, Gaughin, and Courbet, among others. Temporary exhibitions, beefed up in recent years (and often free), are particularly good, especially those dedicated to photography. The building, like the Grand Palais across the street, is a frothy concoction of marble, glass, and gilt built for the 1900 World's Fair, with huge windows overlooking the Seine. Outside, keep an eye out for two eye-catching sculptures: French World War I hero Georges Clemenceau, facing the Champs-Élysées; and Jean Cardot's resolute image of Winston Churchill, facing the Seine.