Address: 77 Rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris
Phone: 01 44 18 61 10
Metro: Line 13, Varenne
Opening hours: Summer 10:00–18:00; Winter 10:00–17:00
Closed: Mondays
Visit duration: Approximately 2 hours
Website: Rodin Museum www.musee-rodin.fr
Among all the museums in Paris, the Rodin Museum is uniquely privileged. Located to the right of the Military Museum, it boasts a three-hectare garden where the museum building sits. Here, one can not only view the brilliant works of the sculptor Auguste Rodin throughout his life but also stroll through the garden, where many of his most representative masterpieces are installed harmoniously within the natural landscape.
The Rodin Museum is housed in the exquisite and perfect 18th-century Rococo-style Hôtel Biron. In the 1910s, through the advocacy of figures from the arts and politics—such as Milpo, Poincaré, Clemenceau, and Clermont-Tonnerre—the government finally passed the budget for the Rodin Museum on December 24, 1916. Before his death, Rodin decided to donate all his personal works and collections to the state. Regrettably, Rodin passed away on November 17, 1917, never seeing the museum’s completion. Two years later (1919), the Rodin Museum finally opened.
Rodin was a modernist pioneer who bridged the past and future in Western sculpture. He transformed his passionate and intense life into bodily sculptures. In his radically original style, much like the Impressionist painters of his time, he broke forms to convey aspects of life from reality. Particularly in his clay, bronze, and marble works, he displayed power and passion, with light variations appearing on both smooth surfaces and rough, uneven textures. If asked what Rodin’s language is, there is no doubt that it is the body, clay, bronze, and marble. He sculpted passion, pain, pleasure, and thought. He challenged his era, and even today, he continues to captivate us.
