The works he wouldn't sell
What the artist kept: the blue Celestina, the Dora Maar portraits, sculptures that never left his studios — Picasso by his own measure.
GFreihalter — CC BY-SA 3.0 · DiscoA340 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Jean-Pierre Dalbéra — CC BY 2.0 · Rob Oo from NL — CC BY 2.0
Guernica lives in Madrid and other landmark canvases are scattered worldwide — this museum's power isn't the "most famous" but the depth: his complete arc in his own hand, and the works he himself treasured.
The proven order: Place des Vosges in the morning with free Hugo house, free Carnavalet next, lunch in the Francs-Bourgeois lanes, Picasso in the afternoon — a full Marais day with two free museums and one paid.
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In the grandest private mansion of the Marais — the Hôtel Salé with its majestic baroque staircase — resides the world's largest public Picasso collection: five thousand works France inherited from his heirs in settlement of estate taxes, the shrewdest art deal a state ever struck. What sets this museum apart from every other Picasso museum: these are the works the artist kept for himself and refused to sell — his pivotal paintings, his sculptures, his preparatory notebooks, and his personal collection of Cézanne, Matisse and Rousseau, the artists he conversed with all his life. The result is an autobiography hung on walls: from Málaga's melancholy blue son to the dismantler of Cubism to art's rebellious old man. Displays rotate their themes every few months to air as much of the five thousand as possible — the museum renews itself between visits. Pair it with the Place des Vosges and Carnavalet on the classic Marais circuit, and book weekends ahead.
What the artist kept: the blue Celestina, the Dora Maar portraits, sculptures that never left his studios — Picasso by his own measure.
Cézanne, Matisse and Henri Rousseau through Picasso the collector's eye — seeing whom the century's genius "collected" is revelatory.
A baroque staircase of honour and 17th-century rooms conversing with 20th-century art — one of Paris's finest vessel-and-content marriages.
Hôtel Salé, Le Marais, 75003 Paris