Monet's water garden — where Impressionism's greatest paintings were born
Giverny is a tiny Normandy village that became the cradle of Impressionism — Claude Monet moved here in 1883 and spent 43 years creating the water garden that inspired his Nymphéas (Water Lilies) series, now hanging in the Orangerie in Paris and in museums worldwide. The garden is one of the most visited sites in Normandy: the Japanese bridge, the weeping willows, the rose-covered path through the flower garden, and the green-shuttered pink house are all exactly as Monet designed them.
Monet rented the house at Giverny in 1883 and bought it in 1890. He immediately began redesigning both the flower garden and the adjacent water garden, diverting a stream to create the pond, importing Japanese bridge designs, and planting the specific combinations of irises, wisterias, and waterlilies that appear repeatedly in his paintings. He painted the Nymphéas series almost continuously from 1896 until his death in 1926, donating the final monumental canvases to France on Armistice Day 1918 — they hang in the Orangerie as Monet intended.