Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac

Why go

The museum offers a different artistic focus from Paris's European painting collections. Jean Nouvel's design shapes the encounter as much as the displays: a winding ramp leads to a long gallery where focused lighting draws attention to individual objects. Outside, coloured projecting boxes and gardens soften the building's presence beside the Seine.

What to look for

• A winding ramp rises gently to the main collection gallery.
• Focused lighting picks out exhibited objects within the dark main gallery.
• Coloured gallery boxes project from the building's north side.

The full story

The museum opened in 2006 after a long campaign for a major Paris institution devoted to the arts and cultures of societies beyond Europe. Writers and thinkers including André Malraux, André Breton and Claude Lévi-Strauss had called for such a museum. Art collector Jacques Kerchache advanced the proposal in a 1990 manifesto and brought it to Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris. Chirac later brought the project to completion as president. Its collections draw on objects gathered by French explorers, missionaries and ethnologists, an important context for considering how works reached Paris. The building also reflects negotiation with its neighbourhood. Nouvel designed the main structure to appear lower than surrounding buildings and screened it with gardens; its outline follows the Seine's curve. The result combines a prominent cultural project with an architecture intended to reduce its visual impact on the riverfront.

Useful to know

• Select the regions or themes that interest you before exploring the long main gallery.
• Look at the exterior from the garden approach before following the ramp indoors.
• Combine the museum with the nearby Eiffel Tower or a Seine walk, leaving time for a substantial collection visit.

Your next visit

Estimated · Declared scenario and planning estimates; no live opening, weather, queue or booking service.