Musée de Montparnasse, Musée Bourdelle and Musée Pasteur
France > Paris > Southern > Montparnasse > Museums
North and west of Montparnasse station are three little-visited yet beguiling museums. At 21 avenue du Maine, beyond the raised slip-road of rue de l'Arrivée, a piece of Montparnasse's illustrious artistic heritage has been saved from demolition. A half-hidden, ivy-clad alley leads to what was once Marie Vassilieff's studio, now converted into the Musée de Montparnasse (Tues–Sun 10am–6pm; €4; M° Montparnasse-Bienvenüe & M° Falguière), hosting temporary exhibitions based on Montparnasse artists past and present. Vassilieff lived here between 1912 and 1929, during which time many leading contemporary artists (Picasso, Léger, Modigliani, Chagall, Braque, among others) visited to wine, dine and dance with her. Architect's offices now occupy many of the studios nearby, but there's also a private art gallery and a flower shop whose beautiful blooms spill out into the alley.On rue Antoine-Bourdelle, opposite the Musée de Montparnasse, a garden of sculptures invites you into the Musée Bourdelle (Tues–Sun 10am–5.40pm; free). As Rodin's pupil and Giacometti's teacher, Bourdelle's work bridges the period between naturalism and a more geometrically conceived style. His monumental sculptures get pride of place in the chapel-like, modernist grand hall, but other, more intimate areas of the museum are as rewarding. The sculptor's atmospheric old studio, musty with the smells of its ageing parquet floor and greying plaster, is littered with half-complete works that face a chilly northern light. Elsewhere, there's a wonderful series of Beethoven busts and masks, sculpted between 1887 and 1929, and a basement extension in which you can see studies for the sculptor's greatest works, the Monument à Mickiewicz and the Monument au Général Alvear. On the far side of the garden, Bourdelle's living quarters have been preserved complete with shabby bed, stove and some sombre paintings from his private collection. Just around the corner to the right, on rue Falguière, the bold facade of the Île-de-France urban-planning department veers up and away from the line of the street in the smoothest of curves, like the hull of a fantasy spaceship. Between rue du Docteur-Roux and rue Falguière, the Institut Pasteur is renowned for its research into AIDS, a specialism that grew out of the work of its founder Louis Pasteur, who discovered vaccination. For the last few years of his life, after he had finally won the recognition and the laboratory he deserved, Pasteur lived and worked in the house at 25 rue du Docteur-Roux, now the Musée Pasteur (guided tours in French and English daily 2–5.30pm, closed Aug; €3; www.pasteur.fr; M° Pasteur). The tour takes you through the Pasteurs' private apartment, with its perfectly preserved nineteenth-century interior, and on through Pasteur's original laboratory, almost untouched, and finally to his Byzantine-style mausoleum.
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