Cross the Marais Courtyard Into the Hôtel Salé
You come down the Rue de Thorigny in the Marais, in the 3rd arrondissement, and the street gives you a plain wall, a heavy door, and then a courtyard — the kind of arrival that feels less like entering a museum than being let into someone's house. That is the point. The Musée national Picasso-Paris occupies the Hôtel Salé, a grand mid-17th-century mansion built for Pierre Aubert, a tax farmer who grew rich collecting the gabelle, the salt tax. The building's name means "salted." Inside, the mansion has been restored to a spacious state, and one of its pleasures is architectural: a grand staircase based on a Michelangelo design for the Laurentian Library in Florence. Before you have looked at a single canvas, you have already walked through three centuries of Paris.
See the Largest Public Collection of Picasso's Work
The collection is the reason you came, and it is vast: more than 5,000 works of art — paintings, sculptures, drawings, ceramics, prints, engravings and notebooks — alongside tens of thousands of archived pieces from Picasso's personal repository, including his photographic archive, personal papers, correspondence and author manuscripts. A large portion arrived as a donation from Picasso's family after his death in 1973, in accord with the wishes of the artist, who lived in France from 1905 to 1973. Because the collection is so large, works rotate, which means the rooms you walk through will not be the rooms someone else walked through last season.
- What to look for: Self-Portrait (1901), The Two Brothers (1906), Head of a Woman (Fernande) (1909), Man with a Mandolin (1911), Still-Life with Caned Chair (1912), Still-Life with Pitcher and Apples (1919), Paul as Harlequin (1924), The Kiss (1925), Woman in the Garden (1929), Portrait of Dora Maar (1937).
- How it is hung: a few rooms are thematic, but the museum largely follows a chronological sequence, displaying painting, drawings, sculptures and prints together, with photographs, manuscripts and newspaper clippings added for context. The museum has also made an effort to present works by cartoonists who mocked or caricatured Picasso's work from the 1950s.
- The other Picassos: the collection is complemented by Picasso's own personal art collection — works by Renoir, Cézanne, Degas, Rousseau, Seurat, de Chirico and Matisse — as well as some Iberian bronzes and a good collection of African art, by which Picasso was greatly inspired.
- Late work: the museum contains a large number of works Picasso painted after his seventieth birthday.
The display runs across four floors, with the temporary exhibition usually on the ground floor and a special area on the second floor set aside for temporary exhibitions and prints. The third floor holds the library, the documentation and archives department (reserved for research) and the curator's offices. Give it at least an hour; more if the temporary show is one you care about.
Plan Your Visit Around the Museum's Own Rhythm
This is a small museum with capacity limits, so book ahead rather than turning up and hoping. The museum is closed on Mondays, as well as 1 January, 1 May and 25 December. On Tuesday to Friday it opens 10:30–18:00; on Saturday and Sunday, 9:30–18:00. Last entry is 17:15. Audio guides are available in French, German, Chinese, Spanish and English, and there is a free downloadable or printed floor guide. Group tours run about an hour and fifteen minutes, and there is a family tour, "Hunting for Portraits," for ages 7–11. There is a free cloakroom, but no luggage, and backpacks are not allowed — travel light.
- Getting there: Metro Line 1 to Saint-Paul; Line 8 to Saint-Sébastien Froissart or Chemin Vert. Buses 29, 67, 69, 72, 75, 76 and 96 stop nearby. There is a Vélib bike-share station at Perle/Vieille du Temple (No. 3008).
- If you drive: it is discouraged, but nearby garages include Parking Public Temple (132 rue du Temple), Parking Marais (7 rue Barbette) and Parking Beaubourg Horloge (31 rue Beaubourg).
- Worth knowing: all national museums and monuments in Paris are free for everyone on the first Sunday of the month — which also means long lines and crowded rooms.
Eat in the Old Jewish Quarter, Minutes From the Door
When you leave, do not walk straight to the Métro. Head south about seven minutes to Rue des Rosiers, in the old Jewish quarter, where L'As du Fallafel serves cheap falafel — the sort of lunch that costs little and leaves you ready for another museum. For something more settled and mid-range, Le Café des Musées is close by. Either way, you are eating in the Marais, which is half the pleasure of choosing this museum over a larger one across town.
Make a Day of It: The Marais and the Mémorial de la Shoah
The museum sits in the heart of the Marais, so let the neighbourhood carry the rest of your afternoon. In the same district, on rue Geoffroy l'Asnier, is the Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris's Holocaust Memorial Museum, with free entry and weekly guided tours — including a free tour in English on the second Sunday of the month. Carnavalet, the museum of Paris history, is nearby too, with permanent exhibitions that are free. If you are building a wider museum itinerary, note that most museums and galleries in Paris close on either Monday or Tuesday, and that the Paris Museum Pass covers more than 70 museums and monuments around the city and lets you skip lengthy queues — useful in tourist season, when lines can be extensive.
Start with a date. Check the museum's calendar, book your timed entry, and put the Rue de Thorigny at the top of a Marais morning — then let the courtyard, the staircase and the rooms do the rest.