The building at the west end of the Tuileries Garden was constructed in 1852 under Napoleon III to shelter orange trees during winter. Architect Firmin Bourgeois designed a long south-facing glass facade for light and warmth, while Louis Visconti completed restrained stone fronts suited to the garden and Place de la Concorde. During the later nineteenth century, the orangery also accommodated horticultural displays, concerts, examinations, banquets, and public events. It was not originally built as an art museum.

After the First World War, the state sought a permanent home for Claude Monet’s large Water Lilies panels, which the artist offered to France as a gesture linked to peace. Monet worked with officials and architect Camille Lefèvre to adapt the eastern part of the building. Two oval rooms lit from above created a continuous setting for eight mural-scale compositions. Monet died in 1926, and the installation opened to the public in 1927 as the Musée Claude Monet.

The western galleries displayed other modern art and hosted temporary exhibitions. In 1959 and 1963, the state acquired the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection, including works by Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani, Soutine, Derain, and others. Remodeling placed this collection within the Orangerie, changing circulation and sometimes compromising the natural light intended for Monet’s rooms. The museum’s identity consequently joined a site-specific Water Lilies ensemble with a separate collection formed through private taste and later national acquisition.

A major renovation from 2000 to 2006 removed earlier interventions, restored overhead daylight to the oval rooms, and created lower-level galleries for the Walter-Guillaume works and temporary exhibitions. Archaeological discoveries during construction included remains of the defensive wall built under Louis XIII, which were incorporated into the renewed museum. The building thus retains its nineteenth-century shell and the 1920s spatial concept for Monet, while its structure, services, entrances, and subterranean exhibition areas reflect extensive modern reconstruction.

The Orangerie is administered with the Musée d’Orsay as a national museum. Its central historical artifact is not simply a group of movable paintings but Monet’s planned relationship between canvases, curved walls, filtered daylight, and the visitor’s movement through two rooms. The Water Lilies panels are original, though conserved and reinstalled within a renovated envelope. Understanding the site requires separating the 1852 orangery, its diverse civic uses, the 1927 memorial installation, later collecting, and the twenty-first-century museum created beneath and within it. That sequence explains why the modest garden building carries importance far beyond its original horticultural purpose.