The Musee' d'Orsay

John Springman
Mar 9, 2016
1 min read

The Musee' d'Orsay was, in many ways, more interesting to me that The Louvre. The Musee' d'Orsay started life as a train station. Our tour guide for the bike tour told us of meeting a 94 year old woman who was a member of the resistance during WWII. She passed messages back and forth between the Allies and the Resistance forces, and she was eventually caught and sent by the Nazi's to a concentration camp in Germany. She was deported to the concentration camp from the train station that is now the Musee d'Orsay. She was lucky enough to have survived the concentration camp, and later was repatriated by the Allies to her home town, Paris, and she arrived in this same train station. His story increased my reverence for the building as we reviewed the artwork housed there.

Here are some shots of the museum, exterior and interior.

I'm not going to comment on these great works of art. This museum is focused on "modern art" as opposed to the ancient art housed in the palace at Versailles and palace d'Lourve. Having attempted painting myself, I found these works to be particularly moving and beautiful. What a privelege to be able to see these up close: