Giverny
Claude Monet'S House And Gardens, Where He Lived From 1883 And Painted The Water Lilies; Open In Season, Closed In Winter · Giverny, Normandy
Giverny is the Normandy village on the edge of the Seine valley where the painter Claude Monet lived from 1883 until his death in 1926, and his house and gardens are one of the most visited places in France outside Paris. There are two gardens. The Clos Normand in front of the pink house is a dense flower garden of beds and arches planted for colour through the season. Across the road, reached by a pedestrian underpass, is the water garden Monet created by diverting a stream: a pond with water lilies, willows, bamboo and the green Japanese bridge he painted again and again, and which led to the great water lily canvases. The house keeps his bright yellow dining room, blue-tiled kitchen and a large collection of Japanese prints. It is a garden before it is a museum, as the original paintings are elsewhere. The site closes in winter, tickets are timed, and it is very crowded in spring and summer. Most visitors come by train from Paris to Vernon, then take a shuttle bus or ride a bike the last few kilometres.
84 Rue Claude Monet, 27620 Giverny, Eure, Giverny, Normandy, France
Monet's house and gardens are seasonal. They usually open from around the start of April to the start of November, daily within that period, and are closed through the winter while the gardeners replant, so a trip between November and March will find the gates shut; confirm the exact season each year. Tickets are sold for timed entry slots, and in spring and summer the slots, above all on weekends, bank holidays and May bridge days, sell out ahead online, so buying at the gate is a gamble. The last entry is well before closing, and the queues at the gate and the ticket office are longest in the late morning when coach tours and trains from Paris arrive together. The house interior is visited on a one-way route with a slow-moving line in busy periods. The Musée des Impressionnismes nearby follows a similar season with its own ticket and may close between exhibitions. The shuttle buses from Vernon station run in the season to match trains; confirm the timetable, as it is thinner early and late in the year.