The garden café
A rose courtyard and glasshouse — one of Paris's quietest spots.
JLPC — CC BY-SA 3.0 · DiscoA340 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · DiscoA340 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Reinhardhauke — CC BY-SA 3.0
Yes — the **permanent collection is free** to everyone, which is rare in Paris and makes it one of the best things to do there at no cost. What costs is the **temporary exhibitions** the museum runs seasonally, and those are entirely optional. The **garden café** is of course paid, but at reasonable prices, and no purchase is required to sit in the garden itself. ⚠ Check for **Monday**: the museum is normally closed then, like most of Paris's municipal museums, and that is what most often costs people the visit.
Three things. **The quiet**: you come through a gate on an ordinary street into a gravel lane and a country house with green shutters — you forget you are in Paris, minutes from Pigalle. **The free entry**: rare in a city where everything is ticketed. And **the garden**: a rose courtyard with a glasshouse café, among the best places in the city to rest in spring and summer. Treat it as a **stop** on a Montmartre day rather than a destination: an hour covers it, and you come out calmer than you went in.
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A small country house with green shutters at the end of a gravel lane, hidden behind a gate in the ninth arrondissement — one of the loveliest secrets in Paris and among the least crowded. And **entry is free**. It was built in 1830 and lived in by the Dutch-French painter **Ary Scheffer**, whose salon was among the most celebrated of Romantic Paris: every Friday he received **George Sand**, **Chopin**, **Delacroix**, **Liszt**, **Turgenev** and **Dickens** here. The first floor is devoted to **George Sand** — the writer who published under a man's name, wore men's clothes and smoked cigars at a time when women were permitted none of it: her furniture, jewellery and personal effects, and a cast of Chopin's left hand. The second floor holds Scheffer's studio and paintings. ⚠ But **the real value is the garden**: a small courtyard full of roses and trees with a glasshouse **café** — among the quietest places to sit in the whole of Paris, and minutes from the crush of Pigalle and Montmartre.
A rose courtyard and glasshouse — one of Paris's quietest spots.
Her furniture, effects and a cast of Chopin's hand.
The second-floor atelier and his paintings.
16 Rue Chaptal, 75009 Paris