Monet's Gardens at Giverny

Giverny is the rare museum you can smell: Claude Monet lived in the pink-and-green house here from 1883 until his death in 1926, and he gardened as deliberately as he painted - the Clos Normand in front stacked into flowering walls that change cast weekly, and across the lane the water garden he engineered from a branch of the Epte, willow-draped, bamboo-edged and crossed by the green Japanese bridge. This pond became his obsession and modern art's springboard: the waterlily canvases that filled his final decades - and now wrap the great oval rooms of the Orangerie in Paris - were painted from these few hundred square metres of reflection. Restored from dereliction and opened by the Fondation Claude Monet in 1980, house and gardens run seasonally from spring to the first of November; the studio-sitting-room, Japanese print collection and famous yellow dining room complete the pilgrimage.

What you actually see

• The water garden - the lily pond and Japanese bridge of the late canvases.
• The Clos Normand - flower archways stacked to painterly excess.
• The pink house - Monet's yellow dining room and Japanese prints.
• The village lane - Giverny's galleries and the impressionism museum close by.

When to go

Open roughly April to 1 November; May and June bring the irises, roses and first waterlilies together, while late summer belongs to the lilies proper. The first and last opening hours transform the visit - middle-of-day coach waves swamp the paths.

Honest expectations

This is one of France's most crowded small sights - the paths are narrow and a midday visit in season means queuing to see a pond. Book the timed ticket, come at opening or after four, and avoid rain-free summer Sundays. The gardens, not the house, are the event; the house queue moves slowly.

Nearby

The Musee des impressionnismes in the village, Vernon's old bridge and Rouen upriver.