Useful information:

158, Bd. Haussmann,
75008 Paris
Phone: 01 45 62 11 59
Open: 7/7, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Internet site:
www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com

Location: 5 minutes from the Champs Elysées, near the department stores. Metro Miromesnil or St Philippe du Roule

Admission: 8 euros
Free audio guide in French, English, Japanese, German, Italian and Spanish for visiting the museum at your own pace. Guided tours are also available. It takes at least one and a half hours to see all the collections and the private apartments.

During the Second Empire, in the 1860s, the Monceau plain became fashionable when financiers, the bourgeoisie (the upper middle class) and the aristocracy had lavish mansions built there. That was when Edouard André, the scion of a Protestant banking family, had this magnificent private townhouse built. A wealthy, enlightened man, he traveled throughout Europe with his wife Nélie Jacquemart for years, putting together an extraordinary art collection.

In addition to an impressive number of masterpieces, the museum provides visitors with an inside glimpse of the couple’s private life and savoir-faire, as well as the period’s atmosphere. They often went abroad, especially Venice, to acquire frescoes and painted ceilings by Tiepolo - which they had dismantled, shipped and installed in their home - fireplaces and wainscoting. Between trips, they led a very active social life, entertaining up to 1 000 guests at lavish receptions.

The Andrés spent between FRF 250,000 and 540,000 a year on their collections at a time when the budget allocated to the national museums was less than FRF 250,000! These figures give some idea of how much the collection’s pieces are worth.

Enter on the covered ramp once used by the guests’ horse-drawn carriages, which leads into the main courtyard, where the mansion’s imposing façade can be admired.

Paintings by the 18th-century French masters Boucher, Nattier and Fragonard are on display in the ground-floor foyer, which opens out on to the main salon. This superb reception room harmoniously blends such typical 18th-century features as gilded wainscoting, a painted ceiling, Gobelins tapestry, furniture and sculptures. The whole is highly representative of the period’s eclectic decorative arts. The ingeniously-designed movable walls could vanish into the floor, turning three rooms into one during receptions that teemed with Paris’ high society. Visitors walk through a series of small rooms filled with various art works before reaching the library, where masterpieces by Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Van Ruysdael are on display.

In the wing opposite the ground floor, a sun-drenched winter garden leads to the smoking room, a typically masculine space where Edouard André offered his friends cigars and brandy in front of a roaring fireplace after a good meal, while in another room his wife told her friends about their latest journeys and acquisitions.

A monumental marble double staircase, a veritable architectural wonder, leads up to the second floor, which is home to what the Andrés called the "Italian museum", a collection of wonderful first-rate works from the Italian Renaissance. The first room has sculptures by Donatello and della Robia; the second, paintings of the Madonna with child by Boticcelli and Perugino; and the third, Venetian pictures, most notably by Mantegna and Bellini. This is considered one of France ‘s richest Italian Renaissance collections after the one in the Louvre. The tour ends with a visit to the owners’ private apartments.

To top it all off and spend a delightfully relaxing moment, the Café Jacquemart-André offers fine food from lunchtime until the museum closes, as well as brunch on Sunday morning, in an outstanding setting decorated with tapestries and a painted ceiling by Tiepolo. A very pleasant terrace looks out on the main courtyard.