Gustave Moreau did not leave his house to a museum: he built the museum himself while he was alive, in the house on rue de La Rochefoucauld where he had been living for almost fifty years, having it raised by two floors to make two studios large enough to hold everything he had painted. Inside there are some twenty-five thousand works, and the walls are covered from floor to ceiling.
Before you get on the metro, know that the 8 euro ticket guarantees you the studios on the second and third floors, while the other rooms, the apartment included, are opened by the museum only when there are few people about, and are not promised. The same ticket also opens the Musée Jean-Jacques Henner, and the museum closes on Tuesdays.
What drives a painter to turn his own house into a museum while he is still working?
Let’s begin!
1. A house bought in 1852, and a precise plan
The Moreau family bought the house at number 14 rue de La Rochefoucauld in 1852 and moved in the following year. It was a modest building, with orange render and wisteria, and a small studio on the top floor.
In April 1895 Gustave Moreau called in the architect Albert Lafon: the two upper floors were sacrificed and in their place came two large studios with north-facing glass, joined by a staircase. The idea was not to enlarge the studio, it was to build the museum. Moreau had already written it in 1862: separated, his works would die, and only all together would they give an idea of what he had been as an artist.
He died on 18 April 1898. The bequest to the State was accepted in 1902 and the museum was inaugurated in January 1903; the first curator was Georges Rouault, who had been Moreau’s pupil and who stayed in post until 1929.
2. The packed walls, which are the real display
How many paintings fit on one wall?
Here, dozens. Go back to the photograph at the top of the page: the walls are brick pink, and the paintings climb in rows one above another up to the ceiling cornice, gilded frames next to dark ones, large formats next to tiny ones, brass labels under each. In the middle of the room there is a wooden cabinet with two open panels, and inside the panels two more small paintings, framed and mounted like a diptych. The floor is made of wide dark boards.
This way of hanging is not a nineteenth-century habit left in place out of laziness: it is the display Moreau wanted, and it is the reason the museum has stayed the same while all the others changed. The first impression is of disorder, and instead it is a will.
3. The spiral staircase, the one you have already seen without knowing where it was
The staircase that joins the two studios is the image you will already have seen around, and in real life it is better. It rises turning on itself, the steps covered with a green and gold runner, the pale wooden handrail describing one single continuous curve and the dark iron banister with a large scroll of volutes at the middle landing. Above, the ceiling opens with a sinuous edge, and the staircase disappears into that opening.
Do not stop at the staircase, though, because the risk is that it eats the room: on its right is the canvas labelled Leda and on its left an enormous drawing, and both are as big as a door.
4. The palette, the swinging panels and the trade
What is left of a painter, when everything is kept?
His oval palette is left too, shut in a case, and I would advise you to look at it closely. It is a wooden board with the thumb hole, and it still carries the oil colours dried in relief: thick whites, pinks, pale blues, a strong blue at the bottom left, a patch of bright green at the centre, and dozens of smaller touches. Next to it, in the same case, are the brushes.
In the studios you also find the large cabinets with swinging panels, which open like pages and hold the drawings: there are thousands of them, and they are the reason the count of works in this house reaches twenty-five thousand, more than fifteen thousand of them by Moreau.
5. What the ticket guarantees you, and what it does not
Please note: this is the practical point it is worth knowing in advance. The museum’s website says the ticket covers the visit to the studios on the second and third floors, and that the other rooms may be opened when attendance is low, but that the visit is not guaranteed. The other rooms are the first-floor apartment, the rooms Moreau lived in, with the family keepsakes and the portraits.
In plain terms: if you are coming for the apartment, pick a quiet time, and reckon with the possibility of not seeing it. If you are coming for the studios and the staircase, those are always there.
6. 2026 is the bicentenary year
Moreau was born in 1826, and the museum is marking the two hundred years with a programme that begins with a carte blanche to a living artist: until 7 December 2026 the painter Ali Banisadr, born in Tehran in 1976 and for decades in New York, is showing his canvases among Moreau’s, in an exhibition called Talisman.
From the street the house does not say much: a tall narrow front of stone and brick, with the white banner of the museum hanging from a bracket, the French flag and the arched ground-floor windows closed by grilles. At the top, if you move to the opposite pavement, you can see the sloping glass of the studio, which is the part added in 1895.
Practical information
Details checked on 25 September 2026 on the official site musee-moreau.fr and on the general terms of sale shared by the Moreau and Henner museums. Prices and opening hours change: check again before you go.
Tickets. The full price is 8 euros and the reduced price 6 euros, and the same ticket also opens the Musée Jean-Jacques Henner. How long the double ticket lasts. The general terms of sale of the two museums speak of 72 hours; the Henner’s opening-hours page says seven days instead. Reckon on three days, which is the version in the contractual document. What it covers. The studios on the second and third floors. The other rooms open when attendance is low and the visit is not guaranteed. Free admission. Under-18s get in free, as do under-26s resident in the European Economic Area, Paris Museum Pass holders, people on minimum social benefits and jobseekers. On the first Sunday of the month entry is free, from 10:00 to 17:45. Opening hours. The museum opens every day except Tuesday, from 10:00 to 18:00. Closing days. It closes on Tuesdays, plus 1 January, 1 May and 25 December. Accessibility. The building has three staircases and no lift, so it is not accessible by wheelchair; pushchairs are left at the entrance. Getting there. The entrance is at 14 rue de La Rochefoucauld. The stops are Trinité and Saint-Georges on line 12 and Pigalle on lines 2 and 12. How long it takes. The studios take an hour, and if you find the apartment open as well, another half hour.
The exhibitions on at the museum, with their dates, are in the table of exhibitions in Paris.
Where to go from here
The twin museum, the one included in the same ticket, is the Musée Jean-Jacques Henner, the studio house of a painter who shares the district with Moreau and little else. Five minutes from here, in the same Nouvelle Athènes, is the Musée de la Vie romantique, which is free, and climbing up you reach Montmartre. If nineteenth-century French painting on a large scale interests you, the next step is the Musée d’Orsay, which holds Moreau’s Orpheus.
Photo credits: studio and spiral staircase by Jean-Yves Lacôte for the Musée Gustave Moreau (CC BY-SA 4.0); oval palette by Eunos (CC BY-SA 4.0); facade by Ziqo (CC BY-SA 4.0), from Wikimedia Commons.
