Blog | HPRG Museum Night 2018 on the Left Bank, Saturday 19th May – Hotels Paris Rive Gauche Blog

Museum Night 2018 on the Left Bank, Saturday 19th May

It’s one of our favourite nights of the year in Paris – Museum Night is back with late opening in almost all of the city’s cultural spaces, with special events and free entrance!

Here’s our quick list of what might tickle your cultural fancy near our hotels.
La Nuit des Musées 2018 Rive Gauche samedi 19 mai
Our area is lucky enough to be packed full of great museums and cultural centres, and during Museum Night they nearly all make a special effort (including free entrance) so you’ll come and visit.

So here are a few suggestions for activities on the Left Bank!

The Galerie des Gobelins is free from 11am-midnight. We told you about their latest fab exhibition The Thread of a Century recently on the blog.

The Natural History Museum’s Grande Galerie de l’Évolution is also free from 7pm-midnight.

At the Curie Museum, super close to the Hotel les Dames du Panthéon and Hotel des Grands Hommes, there’s a lot going on starting from 1pm – a slam workshop, a visit of the museum and the gardens, and even an odd guided visit under a giant umbrella!

You can visit Val-de-Grâce (in a former royal abbey) free from 7-11pm, either alone or with a guide.

The mineralogy museum on the side of the Jardin is open for free visits of its bonkers collection of precious stones from 7pm-midnight. It’s a crazy place stuck in time, that we told you about on the blog in 2016.

The Luxembourg Museum is giving you free entry to its latest exhibition about Tintoretto between 7.30pm and midnight (our article about the exhibition is here, and it’s really close to our hotels).

And just next door, the Hungarian Institute has two puppet shows on offer (and if you think they’re for kids, you’d be wrong) between 8 and 11pm.

The Police Museum may not have the sexiest of names, but their events around May 1968 look interesting, with conferences, visits of the museum, and a guided visit with comment about the May 1968 riots. A few of these events are programmed for the afternoon, so don’t turn up too late.

Our neighbour the Institut du Monde Arabe is opening the doors to its fascinating exhibition about the Suez canal for free (click here for our article about it) and offering free entrance to the permanent collection starting 7.30pm.

Auguste Comte’s House (a ‘museum-apartment’) is free from 6-10pm, and the Delacroix Museum is being extra generous – not only is their latest exhibition free, they also have a concert planned!

At the Monnaie de Paris you’ll get free entrance to the museum (that we visited for you recently) , free etrance to the Subodh Gupta exhibition, engraving demonstrations and an actor reading texts by Victor Hugo!

The Musée d’Orsay has the unlikely combination of Monet and a big band on offer for its ‘Monet Night’, as well as a presentation of certain paintings.

The Army Museum is free until midnight, and the Scale Model Museum in the same building has lots on offer for families.

The Quai Branly Museum awaits your visit with ‘speed visits’ (starting every fifteen minutes) and ‘scary visits‘ of their temporary exhibition about ghosts in Asia.

UNESCO opens its doors to your from 8pm-midnight so you can learn more about their extraordinary architecture and collection of modern art.

And that’s just a small selection of what’s on offer on the Left Bank. If you have time to cross the Seine, you’ll find quite a lot to do too!

Why not start by chilling out to the official playlist for the evening, to get you in the mood?

Museum Night (La Nuit des Musées) is happening in Paris (and all round Europe actually) Saturday 19th May 2018, generally starting around 6pm

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