Excursions and Tourist Visit : Monet’s Giverny and la Roche-Guyon

Day in Giverny : Monet’s house and Museum of Impressionists

Claude Monet’s Fondation

Impressionist master Claude Monet lived and worked in Giverny for 43 extremely creative years. Explore his home, his studio and the wonderfully uninhibited gardens he created and painted. Monet selected plants and trees for their colors and shapes, placed exotic and common flowers together and planted roses and flowering vines. He encouraged everything to grow with abandon.

Ten years after Monet settled in Giverny, he purchased land next to his property. Inspired by his collection of Japanese prints, Monet created a water garden there. He had a pond built, diverted a river for water, built graceful bridges and planted bamboo, willows, wisteria and his famous water lilies.

The gardens were a constant source of pleasure and artistic inspiration for Monet. Gardeners visit Giverny to study his landscaping and planting techniques. Botanists discover new plants. Art lovers recognize the sources of their favorite paintings.

Flowering Guide at Giverny

• April: Tulips, pansies, forget-me-nots, narcissi, aubrietas, cherry and crabapple blossoms, daffodils
• May: Iris, peonies, rhododendrons, geraniums, wisteria, azaleas, wallflowers, daisies, delphiniums
• June: Roses, poppies, clematis, tamaris
• July: Roses, nasturtiums, ageratums, zinnias, nicotiana, busy lizzies, verbenas, dahlias, rudbeckias, salvia, gladioli, cleomes, cosmos, sunflowers, helianthus, water lilies
• August: Dahlias, roses, cosmos, rudbeckias, hibiscus, nasturtiums, water lilies
• September: Carpets of nasturtiums, asters, dahlias, cosmos, rudbeckias

For lunch, you will stop at a traditional water mill restaurant that is 350 years old

le Moulin de Fourges. It has great food and superb gardens.

La Roche Guyon

Famous for its castle  carved into a river bluff and dungeon atop the hill from the twelfth century, this charming river village along the Seine in Normandy is well worth a visit.  The domain is owned by the La Rochefoucauld family.  During WWII, German Field-Marshall Erwin Rommel defendedNormandy against the Allies from a bunker located here and used the Castle as his headquarters.   

Location