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This modern art museum is housed in the east wing of the Palais de Tokyo, built for the 1937 World Fair. Its striking permanent collection includes such masters as Chagall, Picasso, Modigliani and Léger; further highlights include Raoul Dufy’s enormous mural The Spirit of Electricity (1937), and Matisse’s The Dance (1932). Much interesting and innovative contemporary work is shown here. The museum is particularly keen to promote up-and- coming artists by showcasing their work in frequent temporary exhibitions on the same site.

The view of this modern art gallery from the Right Bank of the Seine is one of its finest angles, showing off the arched terminals and grand façade of this former railway station. Architect Victor Laloux designed it specifically to harmonize with the Louvre and Tuileries Quarter across the river.

This fine display of art and furniture, once belonging to avid art collectors Edouard André and his wife Nélie Jacquemart, is housed in a beautiful late 19th-century mansion. It is best known for its Italian Renaissance art, including frescoes by Tiepolo and Paolo Uccello’s St George and the Dragon (c.1435). The reception rooms feature works from the 18th-century “Ecole française”, with paintings by François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Flemish masters are in the library.

Dina Vierny, who modelled for the artist Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) from the ages of 15 to 25, went on to set up this foundation dedicated largely to his works. Set in an 18th-century mansion, it features his sculpture, paintings, drawings, engravings and terracotta works. A wonderful collection of works by other 20th-century artists, many of whom worked in Paris, including Picasso, Matisse, Dufy, Duchamp, Kandinsky and Poliakoff, is also on show.

One of the world’s foremost museums of Asiatic and Oriental art, founded by industrialist Emile Guimet in Lyon in 1879. The Khmer Buddhist temple sculptures from Angkor Wat are the highlight of the finest collection of Cambodian art in the west. Guimet’s original collection tracing Chinese and Japanese religion from the 4th to 19th centuries is also on display, as are artifacts from India, Indonesia and Vietnam.

This impressive mansion, one of the oldest in Paris, was built by the abbots of Cluny in 1330 and now houses a magnificent collection of medieval art, from Gallo-Roman antiquity to the 15th century. It adjoins the ruins of 2nd-century Roman baths (thermes ) with their huge vaulted frigidarium (cold bath). Nearby are the 21 carved stone heads of the kings of Judea from Notre-Dame, decapitated during the Revolution. The museum’s highlight is the exquisite Lady and the Unicorn tapestry series, representing the five senses.

When the Spanish-born artist Pablo Picasso died in 1973, his family donated thousands of his works to the French state in lieu of estate taxes. Thus Paris enjoys the largest collection of Picassos in the world. Housed in the Hôtel Aubert de Fontenay, the museum displays the range of his artistic development, from his Blue and Pink Periods to Cubism, and reveals his proficiency in an astonishing range of techniques and materials.

An impressive collection of works by the sculptor and artist Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) is housed in a splendid 18th-century mansion, the Hôtel Biron, where he spent the last nine years of his life. The rooms display his works roughly chronologically, including his sketches and watercolours. Masterpieces such as The Kiss and Eve are displayed in the airy rotundas. One room is devoted to works by his talented model and muse, Camille Claudel, and Rodin’s personal collection of paintings by Van Gogh, Monet and other masters hang on the walls. The museum’s other highlight is the gardens, the third-largest private gardens in Paris, where famous works such as The Thinker and The Gates of Hell stand among the lime trees and rose bushes.

The view of the golden Dôme church, through the branches of the trees that line these gardens, is awe-inspiring.