Gustave Moreau Museum

The museum you are approaching is a rare survivor of the nineteenth century that maintains the exact atmosphere of the artist's private world. Gustave Moreau spent his life as a prolific painter of mythological and symbolic scenes, and three years before his death, he began the transformation of his family home into this very institution. He worked with an architect to expand the house vertically, adding two monumental studios on the upper floors specifically to showcase his immense collection of canvases. He took the unusual step of bequeathing the house and thousands of his works to the French state on the express condition that they remain undisturbed, ensuring that his studio and personal living quarters would be preserved in perpetuity.