Petit Palais Palace

Address: Avenue Winston Churchill, 75008 Paris, France

Website: https://www.parismusees.paris.fr/en/museums/petit-palais

Hours: Tue-Sun 10am-6pm, closed Mondays (check website for updates)

Admission: Free (permanent collections); temporary exhibitions may be ticketed

The Petit Palais in Paris was constructed for the 1900 Exposition Universelle and now serves as the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris. The Beaux-Arts building displays paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts from antiquity up to the early 20th century.

Works by French and European masters arranged in period galleries and a central courtyard used for sculpture and rotating displays. The museum emphasizes 19th-century French painting alongside decorative arts and offers a compact but comprehensive municipal fine arts collection.

Architect Charles Girault designed the building in a classical Beaux-Arts style for the 1900 exposition, and the structure retains its monumental exhibition halls and ornate façades.

Located on the Right Bank near the Avenue Winston Churchill and the Seine, the Petit Palais is within walking distance of the Champs-Élysées and other museums along the Seine.

• Origin and collection: Built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, the building today houses the city’s fine arts collection covering antiquity through the early 20th century and offers free entry to the permanent collections.

Petit Palais is located on Avenue Winston Churchill on the Right Bank of Paris, adjacent to the Champs‑Élysées and opposite the Grand Palais. The nearest metro station is Champs‑Élysées-Clemenceau (lines 1 and 13), about a 5-8 minute walk; Franklin D. Roosevelt (lines 1 and 9) is also within easy walking distance. By car the palace sits on the quai and avenues bordering the Seine and is a short drive from central Paris, though public transport and walking are generally quicker.

• Take advantage of free admission to the permanent collections (check current policy on the museum site) by visiting weekday mornings when the central courtyard and mosaic-decorated galleries are quieter.
• Start your visit with the ground-floor decorative arts and sculpture galleries-many visitors head straight to the paintings and miss the fine applied arts and the museum's elegant interior courtyard.
• Stop by the museum café in the courtyard for a break; the outdoor courtyard is calm and often overlooked by tourists rushing between the nearby Grand Palais and Champs-Élysées.