Monet’s house and gardens in Giverny were his home for 43 years, from 1883 to 1926. You walk through the pink house, then the flower garden he called the Clos Normand, then the water garden with its green bridge. Here is what each part is, who saved it, and the order to see it in, whichever of the Giverny guided tours you take.
Monet moved to Giverny in 1883 and never truly left, by the Fondation’s account. He travelled to paint, but he ran his family and his flowers by letter. His friends came to him: Cézanne, Rodin and Clemenceau all visited.
| Year | What happened at Giverny |
|---|---|
| 1883 | Monet moves into the long pink house at Giverny with his family |
| 1890 | He buys the property in the autumn and builds a new studio |
| 1893 | He buys the land across the railway line and diverts a branch of the Epte to make the pond |
| 1897 | He starts painting the water lilies |
| 1899 | He stops working in his first studio, the room you now see hung with paintings |
| 1922 | He signs the gift of the Water Lilies panels to the French State (12 April) |
| 1923 | He has a cataract operation, after eyesight trouble first noticed in 1908 |
| 1926 | He dies at Giverny on 5 December, aged 86 |
| 1927 | The Water Lilies panels go on show at the Orangerie in Paris (17 May) |
| 1966 | His son Michel dies and leaves the estate to the Académie des Beaux-Arts |
| 1977-80 | A Versailles curator leads the restoration; the Fondation opens in 1980 |
| 2011-14 | The studio is restored, then Monet's bedroom, then Blanche's bedroom opens |
The dates above come from the Fondation’s own timeline and from the history of its restoration. You will see the traces of most of them on your visit.
When Monet arrived, the Clos Normand was a hectare of apple orchard and kitchen garden. A path of cypress and spruce ran from the gate to the front door. He pulled out the box hedges and, after many arguments with his wife Alice, cut down the spruce.
Metal arches replaced the trees, and they still stand. Roses and nasturtiums line the central path. Japanese cherry and apricot trees took the place of the apples. Thousands of flowers followed: daffodils, tulips, narcissi, irises, Oriental poppies and peonies.
Look to the left of the path. There Monet laid out rectangular beds of a single colour each, “like colours on a palette”, in the Fondation’s words. Today’s gardeners replant them every year.
In 1893 Monet bought the land at the bottom of the Clos Normand, on the other side of the railway line. He diverted the Ru, a small branch of the River Epte, and the pond he made became the subject of his best-known paintings. In 1897 he began to paint its water lilies.
The Japanese bridge stands on the same axis as the central path. It was painted green to stand apart from the red used in Japan. Around the water he planted bamboo, ginkgo, maple, Japanese tree peonies, lilies and weeping willows.
One gardener worked on the pond full time, lifting every dead leaf. Monet received his guests here and spent hours looking at the water. Walk the loop slowly: the bridge looks different from each bank.
You start in the reading room, still called the little blue lounge. It opens onto the pantry, where tea, olive oil, spices and eggs were kept in wall cupboards. Next comes Monet’s first studio, where he worked until 1899.
The studio was restored in 2011, with money from the Versailles Foundation. About 60 of his paintings were reproduced and hung close together on the picture rails, as in his day. Around 80% of the furniture already in the room was kept.
At the end of your visit you come back down to the dining room. Its walls are yellow, and its yellow furniture was modern for its time. Monet’s own Japanese prints hang there. The kitchen beside it is lined with blue Rouen tiles, with a huge range and copper pans.
A staircase takes you to the private rooms. Monet’s bedroom was recreated in 2013. It holds pieces that were there in his lifetime, and reproductions of paintings by his friends Cézanne, Renoir, Signac and Caillebotte.
You pass Monet’s washroom and Alice’s, then her bedroom with a tiny sewing room. Damask tablecloths, sewn together, line the walls of both bedrooms. The last room is the bedroom of Blanche Hoschedé-Monet, who lived at Giverny until her death in 1947. It opened to visitors in 2014.
The house is not wheelchair accessible. The gardens are accessible to people with reduced mobility, and a disability card gets you priority entry at the group entrance.
Monet’s son Michel died in a car accident in 1966. He left the estate to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which owns it today. The paintings still at Giverny went to the Musée Marmottan in Paris.
In 1977 the Académie turned to Gérald Van der Kemp, chief curator of the Château de Versailles from 1953 to 1980. He raised most of the money from American donors through the Versailles Foundation. About 95% of the cost of the restoration was paid by private gifts.
The Fondation Claude Monet opened the house and gardens to the public in 1980. It calls them the second most visited attraction in Normandy. The Art Newspaper counted about 750,000 visitors in 2023.
No original Monet hangs in the house. What you see in the studio are reproductions, placed as he had them. The originals are in museums, most of them in Paris.
The great Water Lilies panels went on show at the Musée de l’Orangerie on 17 May 1927, set out as Monet had asked. The Musée Marmottan Monet holds most of his work. The Fondation sells combined tickets with both museums at its desk, for individual visitors only.
Nearer to hand, the museum in Vernon, 5 km away, shows a round Water Lilies canvas. See things to do in Giverny for it and for the Musée des impressionnismes on the village street.
The visit runs one way, and any exit from the site is final. Plan it before you go in. The Fondation suggests an hour and a half to two hours.
See the house and both gardens before you walk back out to the street. If your tour gives you a set time, ask your guide or leader where you meet afterwards.
Compare the Giverny tours that put a guide with you in the house and gardens, and the ones that give you an app and your own pace.
The rooms, the gardens and the dates are the Fondation Claude Monet’s own, read from its pages, checked 28 September 2026. The history of the restoration and the visitor figure come from Wikipedia and the sources it cites.
Five hours door to door with an art historian: an hour inside the house, an hour across the flower and water gardens, half an hour in the village, priority admission paid.
From $499 per person
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Six people at most, meeting in the 16th: an hour in the village, then two hours in the house and gardens with your guide beside you, and ten minutes at the church.
From $230 per person
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Your own local guide and car from a central Paris hotel for up to six, with two hours together in the house and gardens and the admission paid.
From $1,275 per person
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