MUSEE ORSAY, Museum Itinerary

The museum's itinerary passes through three main levels: the ground floor that runs along a central corridor, the terraced mezzanine floor, and the upper level that runs above the lobby with its train tracks.

As soon as you enter you'll be in front of a large hallway full of sculptures, with several side halls facing it. I suggest following the progressive numbering, starting from the first on the right. By proceeding chronologically, you'll start with the main artistic forms that marked the period between 1848 and 1870. From the painter Eugène Delacroix you move on to realism, exemplified perfectly here with the paintings by Courbet and Millet and the works by engraver and sculptor Honoré Daumier, whose painted-clay busts will amuse you for the wit with which he "distorted" the traits of some politicians of his time.

Your itinerary continues with the landscape painters of the "Barbizon School", and with impressionist paintings made before the movement's "official" start in 1874....