In my younger years, when I headed the press office of the relatively young Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the French Impressionists became my quiet passion. Claude Monet’s Pond with Water Lilies, part of the museum’s collection, caught my eye on every visit to the beloved pavilion. His paintings never failed to stir something within me.
Monet, born 185 years ago in November and gone since December at the age of 86, is still gently celebrated across France each autumn through museum tributes, Impressionist displays, and a renewed reverence for the light and landscapes that shaped his art. It felt like the perfect moment to return to Paris, to wander once more through the echoes of his bygone city of light through his eyes.
As an Israeli in Paris today, the city’s beauty carries an uneasy undercurrent. A place where moments of wonder can be shadowed by rising antisemitism and frequent demonstrations against Israel, feelings that make every street both enchanting and slightly heavy on the heart. Yet as I walked through the boulevards, I felt completely safe. Paris was calm, free of demonstrations, and alive with visitors anticipating Christmas shopping and its spellbinding illuminations. And when I suddenly came upon two elderly violinists playing and singing Hatikva out loud in a metro tunnel, every lingering worry dissolved in an instant.
A Monet walk through Paris is a gentle journey into the painter’s living palette. I began at Boulevard des Capucines, where Monet once stood with his easel, capturing the shimmering bustle of Parisian life from an upper balcony of building 35. After a break at Café de la Paix beside the Opéra Garnier – a legendary gathering spot where Parisian painters and dreamers once met – I continued to the Gare Saint-Lazare train station, venue still humming with the billowing steam and metallic light that inspired his iconic series, even if the trains and passengers have long changed.
On Rue Montorgueil, I imagined the vibrant festival of June 30, 1878: tricolor flags, laughing crowds, and the street alive in the very tones Monet immortalized in his dazzling, iconic painting. A short stroll brought me to Rue Saint-Denis, where that same joyous celebration once unfurled in a riot of color and motion. Each stop reveals a layer of the city as Monet saw it: a Paris of fleeting impressions, bright atmospheres, and moments suspended in light.
Stepping into Monet's universe
Near Place de la Concorde, a visit to the Orangerie Museum is nothing short of magnificent. It is the closest one can come to stepping inside Monet’s dreams. In the quiet oval rooms, his vast Water Lilies encircle visitors in a seamless horizon of color, movement, and reflection. The brushstrokes seem to breathe, the pond’s surface ripples softly around you, and time slows as the world outside disappears. It is not simply an exhibition. It is an immersion into Monet’s inner world, a peaceful sanctuary he offered as a final gift to anyone willing to pause and truly see.
Not far away, the Musée d’Orsay along the Seine feels like stepping directly into Monet’s universe. On the rooftop Impressionist floor, his luminous canvases unfold in a breathtaking sequence. Radiant skies, trembling reflections, and landscapes captured with unmatched sensitivity. Beneath the soaring iron beams of this former railway station, Monet’s genius fills the galleries with shifting light and quiet wonder. It is his sanctuary within Paris, an hour of pure joy in a shrine no admirer should ever miss.
Among the masterpieces displayed, my favorites shine brightest: Poppies, with its vibrant red field shimmering beneath a summer sky; Woman with a Parasol, capturing a fleeting breeze in a single luminous moment; and The Rue Montorgueil, June 30, 1878, bursting with festive flags and pure Parisian joy, painted on the very street I had just walked. These works form the full poetry of Monet’s eye: color in motion, light in constant transformation, and life celebrated in every brushstroke.
It was no surprise that our search for a doorway back into elegant, bygone Paris, with Claude Monet always in mind, led us straight to La Maison Proust, an upmarket 23-room boutique hotel in the Marais area. A place that feels suspended in time. Stepping inside is like entering the Belle Époque itself: velvet lounges, warm lamplight, and the quiet sophistication that once defined Parisian life. What made our stay truly extraordinary was the room dedicated to Monet. Waking up there felt like sharing space with the master of Impressionism himself. An intimate, dreamlike journey into the past.
“Jacques Garcia, one of France’s most celebrated interior designers, brought his unmistakable touch to La Maison Proust,” explains the charming hotel manager, Florian Depardieu. “Lush fabrics, gilded details, and sensual lighting arranged with his signature blend of opulence and intimacy. Known for transforming historic spaces into theatrical, emotionally rich interiors, Garcia has shaped some of the world’s most iconic hotels, making every room feel like a story unfolding in velvet and light”, he says.
Marcel Proust was the monumental French novelist who transformed literature with his intimate, time-bending masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. Alongside him, Claude Monet reshaped the way we understand time, light, and memory in paint. Proust revealed the inner landscapes of the heart, while Monet revealed the shifting poetry of the natural world. To stay in a hotel honoring one, while residing in a room devoted to the other, is to stand at the crossroads of France’s deepest sensitivities. Literature and brushstroke, remembrance and light.
The Salon d’Eau, a privately reserved water-and-wellness suite in the hotel’s spa by La Mer, is a Moroccan hammam-style pool that glows in blue like a hidden sanctuary. The hour we spent there (60 minutes per day are reserved exclusively for each room) offered a perfect escape from our endless street wanderings. The intimate bar on the ground floor shimmers with charm, and the velvet lounges lined with evocative portrait paintings wrapped us in a living gallery of Parisian elegance during breakfast.
A visit to Montmartre, Paris’s historic hilltop village with its bohemian spirit, winding cobbled streets, and sweeping views, was pure joy. In his early years, Monet found there an artistic energy that shaped his Impressionist vision. In daylight, a visit to the newly renovated Notre-Dame, now rising, renewed and radiant after the devastating spring 2019 fire, revealed its restored spire and stonework, honoring the cathedral’s timeless spirit after years of meticulous reconstruction. Surely a must.
A visit to Giverny, the charming Normandy village where Monet lived and created his Water Lilies – just about an hour from Paris – was unfortunately impossible as it’s open to the public in spring and summer only. My Monet autumn journey came to an end, and Paris felt forever touched by his light – quiet, tender, and shimmering in every corner. It is a city that will always amaze its visitors.
The writer is the Travel Flash Tips publisher.