If the tourist loves impressionism and post-impressionism, he is simply obliged to visit the Orangerie Museum. Here are paintings by Matisse, Cezanne, Renoir, Utrillo, Gauguin, Rousseau, Sisley, Picasso, Modigliani and other artists. The jewel of the collection is the famous "water Lilies" by Monet.

Claude Monet decades wrote the water-Lily pond, which he planted in his garden in Giverny. Monet told me once he realized how magical this looks the pond, and since then almost nothing else written. He has created about 250 paintings in this series. Towards the end of his life Monet was almost blind due to cataracts in both eyes, but continued to paint a pond with water lilies. In 1922 he finished eight large murals, which depicted the pond at different times of the day. The mural, which the artist considered his spiritual Testament, he offered a gift to the French state in honor of the First world with the condition never split picture. For them was selected the former Orangerie in the Tuileries gardens.

This greenhouse was built in 1852 on the project Firmin Bourgeois for the orange trees of the Tuileries. The building is the architectural twin built the year before, and standing in another corner of the garden courts for ball games – Jeu-de-Paume. And the jeu de Paume and the Orangerie became museums, but not immediately.The greenhouse was used variously: it visited the warehouse, and exam room, and the place of accommodation of mobilized soldiers. Exhibitions it organized too – mainly machinery, animals, plants.

To post here "Lilies", required alteration of the building. The chief architect of the Louvre Camille Lefevre with the Monet has developed reconstruction plans. Now "water Lilies" is a two connected oval rooms in the Museum is called the Sistine chapel of impressionism. Top pours smooth natural light, the room is decorated in pale shades of gray on the walls – a riot of colors. People sit on the couches in the middle of the hall and look, then go off to explore another part of the Museum's collection, then they come back and admire "water Lilies".