Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac

The Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac is the Paris museum of the arts and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, at 37 Quai Jacques Chirac on the Left Bank in the 7th arrondissement, about 450 metres from the Eiffel Tower. A full-price ticket costs about €14, and it suits visitors curious about non-European art and anyone pairing a museum with the Eiffel Tower.

The museum was inaugurated in June 2006, a project championed by President Jacques Chirac, and in 2016 it was renamed in his honour.

Jean Nouvel's building and the garden

Jean Nouvel designed the main building as a long gallery raised on stilts above a garden, so the planting seems to pass beneath it. Coloured boxes project from the façade, each holding a small display space, and a tall glass screen along the quai shields the site from traffic.

The garden, about 18,000 square metres, is by the landscape architect Gilles Clément, who planted it loosely with grasses, trees, paths and pools, and it has views of the Eiffel Tower. Along one building, the botanist Patrick Blanc created a vertical garden that covers the wall with living plants. Spring and summer are the best seasons for the garden.

About 3,500 objects shown region by region

A long ramp leads up into the main gallery, a dimly lit space arranged by region, with about 3,500 objects on display at a time. Masks, sculpture, textiles, jewellery, ritual objects, musical instruments and photographs follow one another: African masks and sculpture, Oceanic art, Pre-Columbian Americas and Asian textiles among them. Temporary exhibitions run through the year.

Over a million items and a rotating display

The quai Branly holds more than a million items: about 300,000 works, 700,000 photographs, 320,000 documents, 10,000 musical instruments and 25,000 textiles and garments, so the 3,500 objects on show are a small rotating selection. Notable pieces include a Moai ancestor head from Easter Island, a 19th-century Sango reliquary from Gabon, a 1860s Wet'suwet'en totem pole and an Aztec figure of the maize goddess Chicomecōātl. The complex, garden included, cost €233 million.

The museum has been at the centre of France's restitution debate: in 2018 President Macron pledged to return 26 objects to Benin, and they were ready for return by late 2021. Under the main hall, the Théâtre Claude Lévi-Strauss hosts concerts, films and talks, with acoustic curtains by Issey Miyake.