After knowing many roles, this museum has become a center for photography and video, exploring "the world of images, their uses, and the issues they raise." Its exhibitions not only display photography but mechanical or electronic images. It is one of the finest museums of its type in the world, and it presents ever-changing exhibitions, many of them daringly avant-garde. For years the National Gallery in the Jeu de Paume, in the northeast corner of the Tuileries gardens, was one of the treasures of Paris, displaying some of the finest words of the impressionists. In 1986 that collection was hauled off to the Musée d'Orsay, much to the regret of many. Following a $14-million face-lift, this Second Empire building has been transformed into state-of-the-art galleries. Originally, in this part of the gardens, Napoleon III built a ball court on which jeu de paume, an antecedent of tennis, was played -- hence the museum's name. The most infamous period in the National Gallery's history came during the Nazi occupation, when it served as an "evaluation center" for works of modern art. Paintings from all over France were shipped to the Jeu de Paume; art condemned by the Nazis as "degenerate" was burned.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Paris 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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