Monet's House and Gardens
Monet’s house and gardens are open to the public from April to October each year and lure more than 500,000 people to this tiny little town in Normandy, northwest of Paris. Visitors flock to admire the pretty pink house where Monet lived until his death in December 1926 and to fall in love with the magnificent gardens that everyone will recognise from his luminous paintings. Whatever month you visit during that time, the garden is an absolute feast for the eyes and the scent is dazzling.
Monet signed the rental agreement for the house on May 3, 1883. In those days a railway track ran along the bottom of the then garden and Monet spotted the house from his train carriage as it trundled past. He and his second wife Alice moved to Giverny and in 1890 bought the house; by then Money was hooked on gardening. They lived there for the rest of their days and Monet, who became one of the highest paid artists of his lifetime, transformed the gardens into the most enchanting, alluring corner of Normandy.
70 years after Monet died, the garden is looked after by Briton James Priest. He’s only the third gardener since Monet to have the pleasure and the huge responsibility to keep the artist’s dream alive.
As I walked along the pretty little rue Claude Monet in Giverny, the first thing that I noticed was the scent of flowers. The closer I got to the house where the great artist lived and gardened, the stronger the intoxicating perfume became...