The Palais Galliera, the fashion museum of the City of Paris, is a late nineteenth-century palace with three tall arched windows and three white statues standing in front of the glazing, inside a garden with flower beds and a fountain on avenue Pierre Ier de Serbie. It holds about two hundred thousand pieces of clothing, accessories, photographs and drawings.
One thing has to be said at once, because it decides whether coming here is worth your while: the museum states of itself that it presents no permanent collections. That means the rule of the Paris city museums, the free permanent display, does not apply here: you always pay, 14 euros for the simple ticket, and what you will see depends on the exhibition that is on. The museum closes on Mondays.
Why can a museum full of clothes not keep a single one of them permanently on show?
Let’s begin!
1. The duchess who built a museum and then took her paintings away
The story of this palace begins with a snub, and it is worth the queue at the ticket desk more than the exhibition is. Maria Brignole Sale De Ferrari, Duchess of Galliera, Genoese and immensely rich, gave the City of Paris the land on 31 October 1878 and commissioned the architect Léon Ginain to build on it a museum for her own art collection, which she intended to leave to the city.
Work started on 28 May 1879. The duchess was close to the princes of Orléans: she put up the comte de Paris at the hôtel Matignon, and on 14 May 1886 she gave a lavish ball for her daughter’s engagement without inviting anyone from the government. That ball was the pretext for the exile law promulgated on 22 June 1886, which barred French territory to the heads of formerly reigning families and their direct heirs. Offended, the duchess withdrew her intention of leaving the collections to France and sent them to Genoa, where they still are, in the Palazzo Rosso and the Palazzo Bianco. The palace, finished on 27 February 1894, passed to the City of Paris on 1 July 1894, beautiful and empty.
2. The front, which announces what is not inside
What do the three statues in front of the windows say?
Go back to the photograph at the top of the page and look for the three white figures in front of the great arches. They are Painting, by Henri Chapu, Architecture, by Jules Thomas, and Sculpture, by Pierre Cavelier, and on the frieze above the arches those three words are cut into the stone.
It is the fossil of a project that never happened. The palace announces on its front the picture gallery it was meant to house, and inside, since 1977, there is a museum of clothes. Few buildings in Paris declare on their façade a function they do not have inside, and none does it with as much elegance.
3. The gate of the square, and her monogram
Before you go in, walk round to the gate on the square, because that is where the duchess left her signature.
On the wrought iron, at the top, it reads SQUARE BRIGNOLE GALLIERA, and above the lettering a monogram interlaces her initials, repeated in the leaves of the gate below. Behind it, on the stone, you can read PEINTURE and, further to the right, ARCHITECTURE. The garden carries her family name, the palace carries her title, and the paintings that should have filled it are in Genoa.
4. Two hundred thousand pieces, and why you do not see them
What happens to a silk dress left in a lit room?
Here is the answer to the question at the top, and it is a physical one. A textile exposed to light degrades, and the damage does not stop: the dyes fade, the fibres break under their own weight, old silk splits along its folds by itself. An oil painting takes decades of a lit gallery, an eighteenth-century silk dress does not.
This robe à la française is one of the two hundred thousand pieces, photographed by the museum: brocaded silk on a dusty pink ground, silver floral motifs, the hips widened by paniers, ruched trimmings along the edges and down the skirt. Whether you will see it depends on the exhibition that is on, and that is exactly the point. A fashion museum shows things in rotation, for a few months, and then puts everything back in the dark. Not out of meanness, but to keep the textiles alive.
5. What you actually find when you go in
Since 2021 the museum has shown work from the ground floor up, in the rooms created during the last building campaign, and the route is always that of a temporary exhibition: monographs on a fashion house, on a decade, on a material, on a wardrobe.
Before you buy the ticket, look at what is on. On the date of this check the museum was showing Tisser, broder, sublimer. Les savoir-faire de la mode, open since 13 December 2025 and closing on 18 October 2026. The practical advice is simple: you do not come here «to see the museum»: you come to see an exhibition, and if the subject does not interest you the palace from outside is free and can be looked at from the garden.
6. The triangle of museums, and why the Galliera is right here
The Galliera is not on its own. Five minutes on foot, on the same hill, are the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and the Palais de Tokyo, and going up towards the Trocadéro you reach the three museums of the Palais de Chaillot: six museums inside a few hundred metres.
Bear it in mind for a reason of opening days, which here is the thing most likely to ruin your day. The Galliera and the Musée d’Art Moderne, which belong to the city, close on Mondays; the Guimet, the Cité de l’architecture, the Musée de l’Homme and the Marine, which are national, close on Tuesdays. There is no day when the whole hill is open.
Practical information
Details checked on 25 September 2026 on the official site palaisgalliera.paris.fr. Prices and opening hours change: check again before you go.
Tickets. The simple ticket costs 14 euros, the reduced one 12. The combined ticket costs 17 euros, the reduced one 15. Under-18s get in free. The museum recommends booking even for free entry. No permanent display. The museum states that it presents no permanent collections: the free admission that applies in the collections of the other Paris city museums does not apply here. Opening hours. The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00 to 18:00, with last entry at 17:00. On Fridays it stays open until 21:00, with last entry at 20:00. Closing days. It closes on Mondays, plus 1 May, 25 December and 1 January. On 24 and 31 December it closes at 17:00. Paris Museum Pass. The museum is not included in the pass. Getting there. The entrance is at 10 avenue Pierre Ier de Serbie. The stops are Iéna and Alma - Marceau on line 9. How long it takes. An exhibition at the Galliera asks for an hour, and the garden in front takes a quarter of one.
The exhibitions on at the museum, with their dates, are in the table of exhibitions in Paris.
Where to go from here
The fashion that is not permanently on show here also has a section at the Musée des Arts décoratifs, inside the Louvre palace, which does not keep it permanently on display either. Five minutes away is the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, with its free permanent collection, and on place d’Iéna the Musée Guimet. On the hill, inside a single building, are the Cité de l’architecture, the Musée de l’Homme and the Musée national de la Marine.
Photo credits: south front by Joe deSousa (CC0); gate of the square Brignole Galliera by Siren-Com (CC BY-SA 3.0); robe à la française from the Paris Musées collections (CC0), from Wikimedia Commons.
