The Orsay museum in Paris

Built by architect Victor Laloux in 1900, the "Gare d'Orsay" was one of Paris stations with trains to Orléans and Bordeaux.

 Located across the Louvre on the Seine river left bank, it has been spectacularly renovated  from 1977 to 1986 to host the Orsay museum.

The museum architecture has been praised as a major success in industrial building renovation.

Le Déjeuner by Claude Monet - Orsay museum

Auvers church by Van Gogh - Orsay museum

The Orsay museum (Musée d'Orsay in french) is known worldwide for its famous impressionists collections and is a must for arts lovers.

The "Impressionism" was a French group of painters in the second half of the 19th century.

The impressionists (among them Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Edgar Manet, Théo Van Gogh) painted ordinary life and people on the spot and in the open air.

They rejected historical and mythological subjects and used light colors. Above all, they are famous for having departed from the tradition of painting "reality".

They instead used color spots and strokes to suggest their "impression" of the reality that only reveals itself from the distance.

The Impressionist paintings are now widely acclaimed as some of the bests in art history.