What to See at the Jacquemart-André Museum, Room by Room

The Reception Apartments

You enter through the courtyard, and the first room is the Painting Gallery: Chardin, Boucher with Venus Adorning Herself with the Attributes of Juno, Fragonard. This is the 18th-century French art that Édouard André collected as a man of the Second Empire looking back to the Ancien Régime. Next comes the grand salon, the largest room in the enfilade, with gilded woodwork and morning light. The Tapestry Room takes its name from the series depicting the story of Achilles woven into its walls. The Music Room closes the enfilade; it’s in these salons that La Traviata is performed in the evening, as I describe in opera in the salons.

The Winter Garden and the Staircase

Marbles, palm trees, mirrors: the Winter Garden is the room that impressed guests in 1876, and it still does today. The double-revolution staircase rises from here, and above it, Tiepolo’s Allegory of Justice and Peace, a Venetian fresco from the 18th century. It was restored between autumn 2023 and September 2024, along with the marbles and bronzes of the staircase. Take five minutes. It’s also the slowest passage on Saturdays.

The Smoking Room and the Private Apartments

The Smoking Room houses the two Canalettos, St. Mark’s Square and The Rialto Bridge, in a smaller and darker space than the salons. Next come the private apartments: study, boudoir, library, Madame’s bedroom, and Monsieur’s bedroom. Here, you see the couple rather than the collection, and it’s where I think of Nélie Jacquemart, who lived alone in this house for eighteen years after 1894.

Must-See Paintings on the Ground Floor

Rembrandt’s The Pilgrims of Emmaus, often missed because people look elsewhere. Botticelli, a Madonna and Child. Van Dyck, Reynolds. I locate them room by room on the masterpieces page.

The upper floor: the Italian museum

Three rooms, arranged according to the terms of the 1912 bequest: the Sculpture Room, with Renaissance marbles and bronzes; the Florentine Room, where Uccello’s Saint George Slaying the Dragon hangs; and the Venetian Room, with Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini. This is the most densely packed part of the house and the least visited, because people arrive tired. An elevator goes up to the floor.

The exhibition and the dining room

“Timeless Tintoretto” is visited with the collections + exhibition ticket and a 15-minute time slot. The Andrés’ dining room, under its Tiepolo ceiling, is now Le Nélie, the tea room, freely accessible and with no reservation required.

See the salons in a different light

The opera evening grants private access to the ground-floor collections, without the crowds.

Reminder: the above evening event is booked via GetYourGuide, but the museum entry ticket is purchased at the museum ticket office or at the desk at 158.

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