For even those with the most casual interest in les beaux arts, a visit to Paris cannot be considered complete without a glimpse of what the city's innumerable museums have to offer. If you find the lines at the Musee d'Orsay daunting, or are traveling with young ones whose patience quickly evaporates in the crowds of the best-known exhibitions, you can still experience the city's celebrated art scene with a visit to the Musee Marmottan-Claude Monet.

Housed in a 19^th-century mansion on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, the Musee Marmottan was formerly the hunting lodge of Christophe Edmond Kellermann, Duke of Valmy, before being sold in 1882 to Jules Marmottan. When Marmottan's son Paul died in 1932, he left the house and the family's impressive art collection to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and the mansion was opened two years later as the Musee Marmottan.

The museum remained relatively obscure until 1966, when Claude Monet's son Michel died in a car crash, leaving a sizable bequest of his father's art to the small museum. With more than 130 paintings, watercolors, pastels and drawings, the Musee Marmottan suddenly boasted the world's largest collection of works by Claude Monet, and fans of the renowned Impressionist could now trace the artist's evolving technique over the span of his career in a single museum.

Along with the Monets, the museum plays host to a comprehensive collection of First Empire furniture and objets d'arts, works by German, Flemish and Italian primitive painters, Renaissance tapestries, and numerous Impressionist and Post-impressionist works by artists such as Degas, Gaugin, Manet, Pissaro, Renoir, Rodin and Sisley.

The museum also features an on-site gift shop offering art-related books, posters, prints, cards and calendars, as well as jewelry, scarves, decorative items for the home and creative items for children.

A visit to Musee Marmottan-comfortably off the beaten track but still accessible in the bourgeois 16^th arrondissement-is an ideal way to introduce children to Impressionism and a less-hectic alternative to the better-known galleries.

If you go

The Musee Marmottan-Claude Monet is a short walk from La Muette Metro. En route, enjoy a picnic in the Jardins du Ranelagh, where children will delight in the Guignol - the French equivalent of Punch and Judy - performed on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons between March and November.

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Karen Plumley is a regular contributor to Paris Eiffel Tower News and other tourism websites. Should you want her to write for you, please reach her at .