Monet's house and water garden, the painters' hotel and the hillsides they painted, with Vernon's old mill and Richard the Lionheart's castle down the Seine – the tables, the hotels and the quartiers, in one guide.
In Giverny now
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Weather
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MICHELIN
1 ✱ tables
Photo: Jaime/Adobe Stock
In this guide
Every table and hotel the MICHELIN inspectors have chosen in Giverny – 1 starred and 2 more restaurants – on one map, with our own stories as we write them.
Doors open at 10:00: walk the Grande Allée of the Clos Normand under its iron arches, then cross to the water garden and the Japanese bridge. Allow 1 h 30–2 h; e-tickets recommended. Open until 1 November only.
Children aged 5–12 make their own Halloween monster mask (14:30–16:30, €10, book ahead) while the grown-ups see Daniel Buren's 'Plantations' – free for under-18s in any case.
David Gallienne's Michelin-starred table in the village: menus of three 'tableaux' at €98 (not on Saturdays), five at €150 or seven at €180, drinks extra. Dinner service from 19:15; book.
Children aged 3–12 decorate the Château des Tourelles with friendly monsters at the Musée de Vernon (10:30–12:00, €8.50); grown-ups can look for Monet's round 'Nymphéas' in the galleries. Then a look at the Vieux-Moulin from the river bank.
Join the captain of the garrison for games of skill and riddles from the upper bailey to the outer works (adult €7–9, 5–18 €5–7, best from 8). Good shoes for the steep path.
Costumes on for the Festival des 1001 Courges Halloween ball, with the haunted house (€3.50) to brave first. The listing gives no start time – check with the Moulin before setting off.
The last day of the season (10:00–18:00): rooms dug into the chalk, the secret way up to the keep and this autumn's new installation in the cliff caves. Family ticket (2 adults + 2 children) €29.50.
David Gallienne's bistro in the garden of the Musée des impressionnismes, in a plant-filled room or on the terrace; the tourist office says it serves from breakfast to the end of the day – check hours on the day.
First Sunday of November: free entry for every individual visitor on the last day of Daniel Buren's 'Plantations' – then out into Mark Rudkin's garden of single-colour beds.
✱ MICHELIN star · Bib Gourmand: good cooking at a fair price · ◆ selected in the Guide · € to €€€€: the Guide's own price bands, from «on a budget» to «spare no expense».
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Sunset and drinks
Where to drink
The painters' hotel, a garden café on the village square and a bar à manger on the Seine.
The painters' hotel, frequented by Monet and by Cézanne, Renoir, Sisley, Rodin and the American painters: period décor, bistro furniture and old paintings, simple generous food – Madame Baudy's omelette is still on the menu – and a glass in the village's most storied dining room.
Café, tea room and concept store · Village squareLa Capucine
On the painters' village square: café-restaurant, tea room under the bamboos, gift shop and a nursery of 'Impressionist' plants, with homemade seasonal dishes served on the terrace, in the garden or in the old press house.
A band of Vernon friends opened the convivial place they felt their home town had lacked for too long: a restaurant at lunchtime and a 'bar à manger' in the evening, by the Seine, pouring and plating Normandy specialities from short local supply chains.
A tea room furnished like an antique shop – tapestry armchairs, old lamps and curios – where the tourist office ends its guided autumn walk from Giverny with something warming.
Sources: the Office de Tourisme Nouvelle Normandie and the places' own listings there, read 27 October 2026.
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Walks
Giverny on foot
Up the hillsides the painters looked at, and on to the conquest of Château Gaillard.
Photo: Arnaud/Adobe Stock
Photo: Aurélien Papa / Office de Tourisme Nouvelle Normandie
9.3 km · 2 h 30 · Moderate – a steep climb early on and a steep descent to ManitôtLes Coteaux de Giverny
The tourist office's loop into Monet country: up the hillside behind the museum to a balcony path over the village and the valley, through the woods and back via Manitôt – the landscape the painters set up their easels in front of.
Past the back of the Musée des impressionnismes, the balcony path above the village, the Bois du Gros Chêne
All year.
For older children used to walking – there are steep sections.
Start: Giverny town hall, 6 chemin Blanche Hoschedé-Monet
Landscapes and hillsides, says the tourist office: the shorter loop from the village climbs to the same balcony path, follows the GR 2 along the edge of the Bois du Gros Chêne past the fields, then drops back to the town hall.
Past the back of the Musée des impressionnismes, the balcony path above the village, the GR 2
All year.
The shorter of the two village loops; one steep climb.
Start: Car park behind Giverny town hall, chemin Blanche Hoschedé-Monet
A fragile and remarkable hillside reserve right above the village, run by the département: two 5 km waymarked trails, the Sentier du Lézard Vert and the Sentier de l'Astragale.
Past wild orchids such as the fly, lizard and bumblebee orchids (in season), morello cherry trees, oregano and creeping thyme, an old vineyard worked for more than 1,000 years
All year, but closed at some periods for grazing – check with the Cen Normandie (02 35 65 47 10).
Yes – two short discovery trails on a hillside nature reserve.
A loop between Vézillon, Les Andelys and Bouafles shaped by Philippe Auguste's conquest of Château Gaillard: mysterious woods, the climb to the castle's viewpoint, then home along the Seine in Impressionist colours.
Past the Bois des Boisets and the Bois des Norets, the Château Gaillard car park and the sentier du Genévrier, the panoramic viewpoint over the Seine
All year.
For older children – the tourist office calls it very hilly.
Start: Daniel Houssays playground, rue Jean Bequet, Vézillon (towards Bouafles)
Sources: the Office de Tourisme Nouvelle Normandie's walking routes and nature-site listings, read 27 October 2026. Coastal paths close in rough seas – check before you set off.
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With kids
Giverny for children
Monster masks at the museum, a haunted mill, Richard the Lionheart's castle and a château dug into the cliff.
Monet's refuge from 1883 to 1926: the pink-roughcast house with its coloured rooms, the flower-packed Clos Normand and the water garden with its water lilies and its famous Japanese bridge – the second most visited site in Normandy.
Daily 10:00–18:00 (last admission 17:30) until 1 November 2026; closed for the winter after that.
A museum set into the hillside, with Mark Rudkin's garden of single-colour 'rooms' running down to a poppy meadow. Until 1 November, Daniel Buren's 'Plantations' carries his trademark 8.7 cm stripes from the gardens into the galleries, alongside some 70 works from the collection, from Monet and Caillebotte to Bonnard.
Daily 10:00–18:00 (last admission 17:30) until 1 November 2026.
Children dream up a funny creature from the fantastical world of Halloween and make a monster mask to take home – bulging eyes, odd horns, silly teeth – in the museum's light-filled workshop room.
Thursday 29 October ('Trésors d'automne') and Friday 30 October ('Mon gentil monstre d'Halloween'), 14:30–16:30.
Three mechanic brothers have been bringing engines back to life since 1966: pumps and hydraulic machines from the United States, Poland, England and France, farm machinery straight out of 'Modern Times' and a veneer saw of 1824 that slices precious woods to a tenth of a millimetre – all in working order.
The tourist office listing gives no opening hours – check before going.
Five kilometres from Giverny, the painters who followed Monet to the banks of the Seine: a rare round 'Nymphéas' by Monet himself, Theodore Earl Butler and Mary Fairchild MacMonnies, and Pierre Bonnard – who lived in Vernon from 1910 – with Maurice Denis and Félix Vallotton.
Tuesday–Sunday 10:00–12:30 and 14:00–17:00; closed Mondays and public holidays – so closed on Sunday 1 November.
Everyone in Vernon knows the Château des Tourelles – but what if it were haunted? Children decorate its lit-up windows with friendly monsters, vampires and ghosts in a Halloween art workshop at the town museum.
Perched on the piers of the medieval bridge, the half-timbered mill turned with the river's current; six wheat mills worked here in the 18th century, until a dam downstream stopped the last four in October 1849. Vernon's emblem – and its best photo stop.
All year, seen from outside only – the interior is closed to the public.
A guided ride that starts at the station where the Paris trains stop and ends in front of the gate of Monet's house and gardens – the gentle way to arrive in Giverny.
Sundays and public holidays at 14:00, April–November.
A fortress backed into the chalk cliff since the Middle Ages: the first castle was dug into the rock, a secret passage climbs to the 13th-century keep on the hilltop, and Rommel had casemates cut into the cliff in 1944. Edgar P. Jacobs sent Professor Mortimer time-travelling from here in the Blake and Mortimer album 'Le Piège diabolique'.
Daily 10:00–18:00 until 1 November (last ticket an hour before closing).
Built in 1740 in a classical style inspired by Versailles and owned in turn by Louis XV, the Duc de Penthièvre and Louis-Philippe: panelled salons, Bonaparte family mementoes and Gobelins tapestries – and a 20-hectare park with 18th-century fountains, an Italian water garden and trees two centuries old.
Tuesday–Sunday 10:00–18:00 until 1 November; closed Mondays, open on public holidays.
The Jardin des Plumes and the Moulin de Fourges celebrate autumn in the Epte valley with a festival of squashes – and a haunted house to cross in the late-18th-century mill, whose architecture was inspired by Marie-Antoinette's hamlet at Versailles.
From prehistory to 20th-century industry – paintings, sculpture, furniture, archaeology – crowned by 'Coriolan supplié par sa famille', the masterpiece by Nicolas Poussin, one of the greatest French painters of the 17th century and a son of Les Andelys.
Monday and Wednesday–Sunday 14:00–18:00 until 1 November; closed Tuesdays.
To do · Ages All ages; family visits for 5–18 (best from 8) and for 5–7.Château Gaillard
Richard the Lionheart's fortress of 1198, built in record time to bar the Seine upstream of Rouen; Philippe Auguste took it in 1204, bringing Normandy into the kingdom of France. The reward for the climb is a view over one of the finest loops of the Seine.
Wednesday–Sunday 10:00–12:30 and 14:00–18:00 until 1 November; closed Monday and Tuesday, open on public holidays.
A phone and a cardboard headset take you through the streets of the Petit-Andely as they were in the Middle Ages, into the closed chapel of the Hôpital Saint-Jacques in 360°, along the Seine through paintings by Vallotton and Lebasque, and up to Château Gaillard in its 13th-century glory.
Sources: the Office de Tourisme Nouvelle Normandie (nouvelle-normandie-tourisme.com), the Maison et jardins de Claude Monet (claudemonetgiverny.fr), the Musée des impressionnismes Giverny (mdig.fr) and the Château de La Roche-Guyon, read 27 October 2026. Drive times from the town centre without traffic. Check seasons and ages with the place before you go.
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The atlas
Giverny at a glance
The MICHELIN tables, the hotels and the sights, on one map.
