Paris decked out trains as famous artworks to lure locals back to museums

It is also a way to promote the benefits of railway travel

Regional transport stakeholders have joined forces to steer Parisians back to museum establishments with a particularly creative action - Train Paris Musées (Paris Museum Train). Unveiled on 27 September, the initiative offers an extraordinary journey to travellers on the C line of Paris regional express railway (RER). Four of its trains have been fully coated with decorations and emblematic works from the French capital's museums.

Railway travel in Paris has never been more beautiful

Transilien SNCF, Paris Musées and Île-de-France Mobilités have prepared a nice surprise to mark the reopening of several local museums after years of renovations. As can be seen in the gallery above, the internal walls of the trains were laminated with a high-tech plastic film showing the emblematic Parisian salons preserved at the Carnavalet Museum of History of Paris, Raoul Dufy’s The Electricity Fairy, a masterpiece at the Museum of Modern Art, or the new sculpture gallery at Petit Palais.

RER C, the second-longest line in the regional network, was not picked at random for the purpose as it serves the most emblematic museums of Paris, such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fashion, the Museum of Fine Arts, etc.

It is also the most touristic line operated by Transilien SNCF for Île-de-France Mobilités, with many major heritage sites that used to welcome 50,000 tourists per day, before COVID-19. The “Paris Museums Train” will stop every day at the 36 stations of Line C. crossing 5 departments (Paris, Hauts-de-Seine, Val de Marne, Essonne and Yvelines).

For the organisers, the initiative is not just a nod to culture - it aims to make daily travel more pleasant for Parisians and its guests, while promoting the advantages of railway transport in terms of practicality, cost and ecological footprint. They also remind that access to the permanent exhibitions at municipal museums is free and in general, requires no preliminary reservation.