Forty-five minutes alone with the Impressionists

This is less a review than a technique, and it works every time.

The Orsay opens at 9:30. Be in the ticket-holder line at 9:00 (book the first slot online), and when the doors open, skip everything and go directly to level 5 — the Impressionist galleries. Everyone else stops at the ground floor sculptures. Their mistake, your forty-five minutes.

Until a little after ten you'll share Monet's cathedrals and the Van Gogh room with a dozen people instead of four hundred. Standing nearly alone in front of Starry Night Over the Rhône at 9:40 on a Tuesday is a museum experience money explicitly cannot buy — the €16 ticket is the same one the crowd holds at noon.

Work your way down as the museum fills. By the time you hit the clock window for the photo, you've seen the best of it in peace.