Giverny tours from Paris : Guided tours of Claude Monet garden and house

Portrait and landscape painter Claude Monet founded the painting style known as Impressionism -- a French pictorial movement that would mark a turning point in the history of painting during the 19th century -- along with Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. With Monet, everything changed; the use of colors, light, and subjects.

Guided visit of Giverny Monet

The French region of Normandy in the Eure territory would become one of his main sources of inspiration, most notably the town of Giverny, near Vernon, situated in the Parisian region near Barbizon and Auvers-Sur-Oise. Monet lived in Giverny for 43 long years (1883-1926) in a charming home that is now a museum and a registered historical monument. In fact, Monet’s house and gardens welcome 500,000 visitors a year (we highly recommend choosing skip-the-line tickets for a free or guided tour). Each visitor has the chance to personally discover the Impressionist master and his family in their romantic home superbly preserved and surrounded by trees and flowers, all of which appear to bathe in an impressionistic light. This house was truly one of the most faithful muses of the painter, to such an extent that one could speak of a real couple: Giverny Monet, or the story of a place and an artist who became truly inseparable.

At the Giverny residence, one can tour his workshop-living room and bedrooms as well as admire his furniture, famous collection of Japanese prints (another source of inspiration for Monet), and a plethora of colors. Outside, the water garden lures you into an aesthetic universe overflowing with different flowers chosen by Monet -- wisteria, azalea, rose and peony to name just a few. There’s also a pond, a Japanese bridge, weeping willows and of course, the water lilies immortalized in his paintings and in the series, Water Lilies or Les Nymphéas, which became one of Claude Monet's most famous paintings (even though he was nearly blind!) and which is now housed at the Orangery Museum in Paris. Monet's works of art are at the source of Impressionism.

Monet was buried at the Giverny Cemetery in 1926. In homage to Monet, a yellow and red rose that bears his name was made. The home and gardens of Monet in Giverny are like a veritable, living painting in which one can wander at leisure, a natural masterpiece saved from destruction thanks to American patrons and donors.

Visit Giverny with Monet

Paris City Vision offers an excursion to the Claude Monet Foundation (84, rue Claude Monet, 27620 Giverny) that houses the home, workshop, and gardens of Monet. You can also discover the Giverny Museum of Impressionism. Order your skip-the-line tickets on our website and save time during your guided or self-guided tour of the Giverny Museum and its gardens.

The Foundation is open every day from April 1 to November 1, 9:30 am to 6 p.m. Book your Giverny skip-the-line tickets online with Paris City Vision and save time!

But if the village Giverny owes a lot to painters, it also deserves to be visited for its many other qualities. The landscapes that have conquered nineteenth and twentieth-century artists continue to amaze visitors today. The hillsides of Giverny offer striking views of the surrounding northern countryside, between woods, glades, and fields, and walk through several marked trails. You will discover sometimes, leaving the canopy of the trees, the point of view chosen formerly by Monet or one of his colleagues to testify the beauty and the light of Giverny.