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A house hunt
Monet found Giverny from a train window in 1883
Threatened with court over unpaid rent at Poissy, Monet looked for an affordable house near Paris large enough for his extended family of ten. On 5 April 1883 he took a train and discovered Giverny, a small village of 279 inhabitants.
Le Pressoir
He rented a pink farmhouse called the cider press
He found a vacant long two-storey farmhouse called Le Pressoir, the cider press, with pink rendered walls and grey shutters. Monet moved in on 29 April 1883 with his two sons, and Alice Hoschedé and her children joined them the next day.
The studio
In 1885 the barn became a studio
In their first year the couple planted the garden and painted the house shutters green. In December 1885 Monet converted the west barn into a studio with a wooden floor and a large window. It is believed that he created his first paintings of his garden in 1888.
Water lilies
At the 1889 world's fair he saw hybrid water lilies
At the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris Monet is believed to have seen a display of hybrid water lilies developed from reddish flowers, and met their creator, the horticulturist Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac. In 1890 Monet bought the house he had been renting.
Today
It is the second most visited site in Normandy after Mont Saint-Michel
With 530,000 visitors in 2010, the house and gardens are the second most visited tourist site in Normandy after Mont Saint-Michel. The estate was classified as a monument historique in 1976. Monet lived and painted here for 43 years.
Day 2, morning
Next is Giverny Museum of Impressionisms.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Fondation Monet in Giverny, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.