Musée d'Orsay turns 40: a free weekend with concerts in the nave

The Musée d'Orsay, the former railway station on the Left Bank that became a museum in December 1986, turns 40 with a free anniversary weekend on 5 and 6 December 2026. Entry to the museum and every activity is free.

Most of the action is in the nave, the great glass-roofed hall. On Saturday at 2pm the French singer Aldebert plays songs from his family album Enfantillages. On Sunday at 2pm, the brass and percussion of the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France play Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and the young singers of the Maîtrise populaire de l'Opéra-Comique perform the same piece five times over the weekend.

In the auditorium, the artist Sophie Calle (Saturday, 5pm) and the comics author Catherine Meurisse (Sunday, 5pm) talk about the building; both talks are in French and need a booking. In the galleries, short 30-minute sessions run every hour in front of works by Rousseau, Degas, Monet and Van Gogh.

The museum opens at 9:30am, and stays open until 8pm on Saturday. Booking is free and recommended from Wednesday 4 November at noon on the museum's ticket site. Take RER C to Musée d'Orsay or Metro Solférino (line 12).