25 Feb

The hotel Raspail Montparnasse makes you visit the Petit Palais in Paris

Paris is filled with breath-taking monuments and vestiges of history, witness of a tumultuous past! The Raspail Montparnasse hotel presents the Petit Palais, museum of Fine Arts in Paris, and a real architectural jewel …

The Petit Palais in Paris

Located in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, on Winston Churchill Avenue, which stretches between the Champs Elysées and the Esplanade des Invalides, the Petit Palais is just across the Grand Palais. Both were created for the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1900. The Petit Palais, built then in the pageantry of an official palace, became a museum in 1902.

The Permanent Collections of the Petit Palais

The permanent collection, on free access, presents works from Antiquity to the end of the 19th century (20th century at the Palais de Tokyo).

A total of 1,300 paintings, sculptures, glassware, jewelery, tapestries, pottery and artworks are exhibited. Ancient and medieval collections, works of the Renaissance, paintings by famous artists of the 19th century such as Cézanne, Monet, Pissaro or Delacroix … The Petit Palais certainly offers a wide artistic panorama!

The architecture of the Petit Palais

If the collections are very interesting, the place itself is worth the detour. Built in trapezoidal form, the museum consists of 4 buildings grouped around a magnificent garden decorated with colonnades.

The rooms are richly decorated with paintings, sculptures, vaults, and stained glass, which give the Petit Palais the appearance of a real palace. The entrance hall, with its frescoes of paintings on the ceiling, the colonnades of the garden, the two large exhibition galleries and the luxurious dome of the staircase are particularly splendid!

Once your visit is over, make sure to have a walk around the charming interior garden. Sit in the shade of the colonnades, on the terrace of the bar-restaurant, and enjoy the idyllic setting …

Fernand Khnopff – the master of the enigma at the Petit Palais

A temporary exhibition dedicated to Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), the master of Belgian symbolism, is held at the Petit Palais until March 17th.

Worldwide known artist during his lifetime, he suffered a strange posthumous eclipse. His works was brought back to light only in 1979, with the exhibitions of Brussels, Paris and Hamburg.

This artist, whose aim was to silently dissolve the border between reality and dream, claimed to “dream the continuous existence of his characters in their milieu until the moment came to represent it in an artwork “.

The exhibition brings together a hundred works, large enough for you to rediscover the subtlety of the Belgian artist. His work is compared with others by artists of his time, such as Gustave Moreau, Gustav Klimt or Franz Von Stuck.

Do not hesitate, come visit the Petit Palais during your stay in Paris! And discover the astonishing exposure of the world’s ambiguity by Fernand Khnopff …