What Is the Musée Rodin?

The Musée Rodin occupies the Hôtel Biron, an early 18th-century private mansion where sculptor Auguste Rodin rented studio and living space from 1908 until his death in 1917. Rodin negotiated a deal with the French state: he would donate his sculptures, drawings, and personal collection of antiquities to the nation in exchange for the state converting the mansion into a museum dedicated to his work. The museum opened in 1919, two years after his death.

Inside, the collection spans Rodin's full career — bronze and marble versions of The Kiss and The Thinker, and studies for the unfinished Gates of Hell, alongside his personal art collection, which includes works by Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. But the three-acre garden behind the mansion is what many visitors remember most: full-scale bronze casts of Rodin's largest works, including The Gates of Hell and The Burghers of Calais, are arranged among rose beds and gravel paths, with a small pond and café at the far end.

Tickets & Prices 2026

Standard adult admission is €14, bought online through the official ticketing site or at the museum. Three combined tickets pair Rodin with a neighboring museum and are worth considering if you're visiting more than one Left Bank collection on the same trip: Musée Rodin plus Musée d'Orsay costs €25, Musée Rodin plus Musée du Quai Branly costs €23, and Musée Rodin plus Musée de l'Armée (Les Invalides) costs €26.

Entry is free for a long list of categories with valid ID: visitors under 18, EU/EEA residents aged 18–25, teachers and École du Louvre faculty, job seekers and social welfare beneficiaries, disabled visitors and one companion, museum professionals, journalists, and professional artists. Paris Museum Pass holders also get free entry — if you're weighing whether a city-wide pass makes sense for your trip, see our breakdown of whether the Paris Pass is worth it. Separately, the museum offers free admission to everyone on the first Sunday of the month, but only from October through March — it isn't a year-round policy, so check the calendar before planning around it.

The museum's official pricing page doesn't list a discounted "reduced" tier below €14 as of mid-2026 — the categories above are full fee waivers rather than a percentage-off rate. If your situation isn't covered, confirm directly through musee-rodin.tickeasy.com or the museum's visitor line before you travel. Rodin's house and studio in Meudon, just outside Paris, is a separate site with free entry year-round for anyone who wants to see where he actually worked.

Opening Hours & Best Time to Go

The Musée Rodin is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10am to 6:30pm, with last entry at 5:45pm — the ticket office closes 45 minutes before the museum does. It's closed every Monday, plus January 1, May 1, and December 25, and it closes early at 5:30pm on December 24 and 31, with last admission at 4:45pm those two days. Posted hours can shift for holidays or operational reasons, so it's worth checking the live schedule on the official site close to your visit date rather than relying on a fixed number.

Weekday mornings right at opening are the calmest time to visit; the museum is small enough that even a modest midday crowd changes the pace of a walk through the garden. Weekend afternoons, especially in spring and summer, draw the heaviest traffic. Note also that from June 8 through July 24, 2026, part of the Sculpture Garden is inaccessible while the museum installs a temporary structure, though the artworks remain viewable from the paths that stay open — worth confirming if the garden is your main reason for visiting outside that window.

How Long to Plan

Budget 1.5 to 2 hours for a focused visit: about 45 minutes to an hour in the indoor galleries, plus a slower loop through the garden, which is genuinely the highlight for most visitors. If you want to read the didactic panels and sit with the garden's larger bronzes rather than walk past them, 2.5 to 3 hours is more realistic. Because the site is compact compared to the Louvre or Musée d'Orsay, it's an easy half-day stop rather than a full day, which makes it a natural add-on to a broader itinerary — see our 2-day Paris itinerary for how to fit it in alongside the city's bigger sights.

No guided tour is necessary. Signage in the galleries and garden is in French and English, and a self-guided visit covers the highlights easily; an audio guide is available on-site for visitors who want deeper context on individual works.

How to Get There

The museum is at 77 Rue de Varenne in the 7th arrondissement. Metro Line 13 stops directly outside at Varenne, and Invalides station (Lines 8 and 13, plus RER C) is a five-minute walk. Bus routes 69, 82, 87, and 92 all run along nearby streets, and there's a Vélib' bike-share station close to the entrance. Street parking in this part of the 7th is metered and limited, so public transport is the more reliable option.

Coming from central tourist landmarks: it's roughly a 15-minute walk from Les Invalides and about 20 minutes on foot from the Eiffel Tower along the Seine, making the museum an easy add-on if you're already in this part of the 7th arrondissement.

Visit Tips: Queues, Booking & Mistakes

Buy your ticket online before you go, especially for a weekend or holiday-week visit — it isn't run as tight a timed-entry system as some Paris museums, but skipping the on-site ticket line still saves real time on a busy day. Buy only through the official site (musee-rodin.fr) or clearly listed partners like musee-rodin.tickeasy.com or parismuseumpass.fr; third-party resale sites routinely mark up tickets for well-known Paris museums, and some sell invalid duplicates.

The most common mistake is treating this as a quick indoor stop and rushing — or skipping — the garden. The garden is where the museum's largest and most recognizable works actually live, and it's included in the standard ticket, so budgeting time for it rather than only the galleries is worth planning around. Security screening is standard; bring a small bag if you can, since larger bags go through the cloakroom, which adds a few minutes if you're already close to closing time. Finally, double-check the day's hours before you go — holiday closures, early closing days around Christmas, and occasional weather-related adjustments, as happened in June 2026, mean the posted hours aren't always fixed.

Nearby Attractions

The Musée Rodin sits in the heart of the 7th arrondissement, within easy walking distance of several major Left Bank sights. Les Invalides and Napoleon's Tomb are about 15 minutes away on foot. The Eiffel Tower is roughly 20 minutes further along the river, an easy combined outing if you start at Rodin in the morning. Musée d'Orsay, with the world's largest Impressionist collection, is about 15 minutes northeast along Boulevard Saint-Germain and Quai Anatole France — and it's the museum most commonly paired with Rodin on a combined ticket, since several of Rodin's own bronzes are displayed there too. If you're planning a fuller Left Bank day, the Louvre is a short RER C or Metro ride across the river, and the Bon Marché department store and the Rue Cler market street both make good lunch or coffee stops between sights.

Frequently Asked Questions