Musée Rodin — Villa des Brillants
The Paris museum shows the finished marbles. Meudon shows the workshop — and it is free.
Photo : Aconcagua
- Address
- 19 avenue Auguste Rodin, 92190 Meudon
- Phone
- +33 1 41 14 35 00
- Website
- meudon.musee-rodin.fr
- Opening hours
- Saturday and Sunday, 10:00–18:00 (last entry 17:15), from late March to late September. Closed on weekdays.
- Admission
- Free entry, no booking required. Guided group tours in French and English on request.
- Getting there
- Meudon Val Fleury (RER C) then bus 169 to “Paul Bert”. Or metro line 12 to Mairie d'Issy, then bus 169, 190 or 290. Free wheelchair loan.
Why come here rather than rue de Varenne
Rodin moved to Meudon at the end of 1893 and bought the Villa des Brillants in December 1895. He made it his production site: hundreds of plaster models, the assembly of The Gates of Hell, the enlargements, the studies, the failures. What survives here is the working memory of the sculptor rather than the gallery version of him.
He lived on this hillside for the last twenty-four years of his life, and died here on 17 November 1917.
What you will see
The plaster gallery is the reason to come. Rodin had it built after his 1900 pavilion at the Universal Exhibition, and it presents the sculptures in their successive states — you see a work being thought through, not just finished. The Gates of Hell, The Kiss, The Burghers of Calais and The Walking Man are all here in plaster.
The villa itself was restored in 1997 from period photographs: the dining room, the drawing room, the sculpture studio.
And the garden, where Rodin and Rose Beuret are buried under a bronze cast of The Thinker, looking out over the Seine valley.
Practical advice
Check the season before travelling: the museum opens weekends only, and only from late March to late September. Many third-party websites still list obsolete hours and a €5 entry fee — entry is free.
The walk up from Meudon Val Fleury station is steep. Bus 169 to “Paul Bert” saves the climb.
Books and reproductions
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