On rue de Grenelle, beside the block of stone of the Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons, a door with raised letters reads MUSEE MAILLOL. Inside is a private museum built around a single story: that of the fifteen-year-old girl who modelled for Aristide Maillol and who, in 1995, made him a museum.
It is the only museum in this left-bank guide that really costs something: the full ticket is 19.90 euros, more than twice the Delacroix and more than one and a half times the Cluny. In exchange it opens every day, Mondays included, and on Thursdays until 22:00, which in Paris is no small thing.
How does a model end up owning a museum?
Let’s begin!
1. The hôtel Bouchardon, and the fountain beside the door
The museum occupies the hôtel Bouchardon, in the 7th arrondissement. Before you go in, take three steps back and look at what is to the left of the door: the monumental flank of the Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons, with reliefs of putti set into the rusticated stone and the number 59 above them.
Then look up at the fountain itself, a few metres further along: Ionic columns, a pediment with a carved wreath and a slab of black marble with a Latin inscription in gilt letters beginning DUM LUDOVICUS XV. It is one of the monumental fountains the 18th century left Paris, and it is free: you look at it from the pavement, on a Monday morning too.
2. Dina Vierny, the reason this museum exists
Who was the woman in the bronzes you are about to see?
Dina Vierny began modelling for Maillol at fifteen and was his model for ten years, until the sculptor’s death in a car crash in 1944. Nearly all the female figures you will see in these rooms have her body.
But the part the panels tell you least about is the war. Vierny worked as a guide for Varian Fry’s network, the organisation that got intellectuals and artists in danger out of occupied France, and she was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and spent six months in prison. Keep that in mind as you look at the bronzes: the girl who posed is the same person who walked fugitives to the passes of the Pyrenees.
3. The bronzes of the permanent collection, on the second floor
The permanent collection of Maillol’s work takes up the second floor, arranged by period and by theme: the paintings and woodcarvings of the years between 1880 and 1900, the tapestry work of the late 19th century, the bronze and terracotta statuettes, the life-size sculptures, the drawings, the work of the 1930s and 1940s.
Go back to the photograph at the top of this page and count them: five bronzes in a single room, on pale wooden plinths, on a floor of hexagonal terracotta tiles. The figures are nearly all female, heavy, calm, with smooth volumes and still poses. Maillol takes the opposite road from Rodin: where Rodin puts in the movement and the tormented surface, he takes everything out and leaves the mass.
4. The statues in the corridors, which are not there by chance
The life-size sculptures are not confined to the rooms. They also line the corridors of the ground and first floors, and you walk between them on your way from one part of the museum to another.
Slow down in one of those passages instead of crossing it. A Maillol in a narrow corridor can be looked at the way no museum lets you look at one: close up, at an angle, while the light turns around it. That is the advantage of a museum fitted into a house.
5. The eighteen bronzes you can see for nothing
Where are the Maillols this museum has no room for?
Here is the thing the museum does not tell you and that is worth an afternoon. In 1964 Dina Vierny gave the French State eighteen Maillol sculptures to be installed in the Jardin des Tuileries.
They are there, in the open, between the Louvre and place de la Concorde: the same figures you see here in a white room are standing on the grass over there, rained on and surrounded by people eating a sandwich. If you liked the museum, the rest of the visit is a walk in the Tuileries, and it costs nothing.
6. A museum of exhibitions, with a collection inside it
It has to be said plainly, because it decides what you will find: the Maillol is above all a museum of temporary exhibitions, it puts on about two a year, and it is those that fill the big rooms and the posters around town.
The ticket is a single one and covers the exhibition and the permanent collection together: you pay 19.90 euros and see both. Before you leave, look up what is on, because that is what changes from one visit to the next. And one thing the site does not say: no page of the museum mentions the Paris Museum Pass, so do not assume they take it.
Practical information
Data checked on 24 September 2026 on the official website museemaillol.com. Prices and opening hours change: check again before you leave.
Tickets. The full ticket costs 19.90 euros and is valid for a single admission, covering both the permanent collection and the temporary exhibition. Reduced. From 65 the ticket is 17.90 euros. It is 15.90 euros for 6 to 18 year-olds, students, jobseekers and disabled visitors, who come in with a free companion. The audioguide costs 5 euros. Opening hours. The museum opens every day from 10:30 to 18:30, with last admission at 17:30. On Thursdays it stays open until 22:00, with last admission at 21:00. Paris Museum Pass. The museum’s pages do not mention it: if you have the pass, ask at the desk before you queue. Getting there. The entrance is at 59-61 rue de Grenelle. The stops are Rue du Bac on line 12, Sèvres - Babylone on lines 10 and 12 and Saint-Sulpice on line 4. How long to allow. The permanent collection takes an hour, and with a large temporary exhibition you easily reach two.
The exhibitions on at the museum, with their dates, are in the table of exhibitions in Paris.
From here on
Ten minutes away on foot is the Musée Rodin, which is the measure against which all of Maillol’s sculpture is taken, and a little further the Musée d’Orsay, which holds more of his work. If you want the free sequel, the eighteen bronzes in the Tuileries are next to the Musée du Louvre. And the other two sculptors’ house-studios on the left bank are the Musée Bourdelle and the Musée Zadkine, both free.
Photo credits: room of bronzes by Ibex73 (CC BY-SA 4.0); entrance on rue de Grenelle by Moonik (CC BY-SA 3.0); pediment of the Four Seasons fountain by Thesupermat (CC BY-SA 3.0), from Wikimedia Commons.
