The Orsay Museum, opened in 1986, is housed in the former Orsay railway station, which was inaugurated at the 1900 Universal Exhibition.
As well as works in traditional fields (painting, sculpture, graphic arts, objets d’art), its collections include works from other disciplines, such as architecture, furnishings and photography. They provide a broad panorama of French and European art from 1848 to 1914.
The museum is worldwide known for its collections of impressionistes painting among which leaders of so emblematic paintings as Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette of Renoir or La chambre de Van Gogh à Arles.
Completed in 1900, the beautiful Beaux-Arts Gare d’Orsay served as the terminus for trains between Paris and south-west France and incorporated a hotel.  By 1939 the platforms were too short for the modern, longer trains and it became a station for suburban trains then a mailing centre, sending packages to prisoners of war during World War II.  Still later it was
used as a film set, most notably for Orson Welles’ adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial.