The museum building was initially built for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans (CF Paris-Orléans), an early French railway company, and was completed in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, following the designs of three architects: Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux. The Gare operated as the terminal for the railways of southwestern France until 1939. By 1939, the station’s short platforms had become unsuitable for the trains that came to be used for mainline services. The station was used for suburban services after 1938 and part of it was converted into a mailing centre during World War II. The Gare d’Orsay hotel closed in 1973. It was in 1977 that the French government decided to transform the station into a museum, which was opened by President François Mitterrand in 1986.

Embodying the Industrial Revolution, Musée d'Orsay is topped with a wonderful arching glass roof through which the sun can easily light the interior and the assembled masterpieces. The museum has a wide array of works on display: from pieces by learned painters, such as Ingres, to Romanticists such as Delacroix or Neo-Realists like Courbet and Daumier. There are expositions dealing with the later artistic trends as well, especially Impressionism and Post-Impressionists, featuring in particular the paintings of Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, van Gogh, and Monet, which are followed by the works of Fauves and Matisse, and the most renowned Cubists and Expressionists.

The museum’s pride, however, is the exhibition of the Impressionist paintings. Initiated by Manet, Renoir, and Monet, the movement created paintings in which the role of the light was the most important. The impressionists most often painted water, for example the river Seine, because in different moments, in different light such sceneries looked completely changed. That was exactly what they wanted to capture in their paintings – the moment. Nevertheless, they also devoted many of their works to the city, painting the crowded cafes along the busy streets of Paris.

Apart from the permanent exhibitions, Musée d'Orsay also hosts temporal exhibitions devoted to particular artists or artistic movements as well as lectures, symposia and other cultural events.