Petit Palais, a fine arts museum by the Champs-Élysées since 1902

The Petit Palais became the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts in 1902, on avenue Winston-Churchill, opposite the Grand Palais. The architect Charles Girault had built it for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, partly on the site of the Palais de l’Industrie.

Girault won the competition by a unanimous jury in 1896. He designed a façade nearly 125 metres long, a monumental porch beneath a dome, a semicircular garden and galleries lit by daylight. In 1902 the Dutuit collection, almost 20,000 works including a Rembrandt self-portrait, entered the museum.

Gifts followed: Edward and Julia Tuck’s 18th-century French decorative art in 1930, portraits of Ambroise Vollard by Bonnard and Cézanne, a collection of icons in 1998. Listed as a historic monument in 1975, the building was renovated from 2001 to 2005.

Between the Seine and the Champs-Élysées, the Petit Palais shows its collections, from antiquity to the 20th century, and its temporary exhibitions, with a bookshop and a café, Café 1902, at the end of the garden.