Giverny And Auvers-Sur-Oise: The Monet And Van Gogh Day

Monet painted his garden at Giverny for more than four decades. Van Gogh spent the last seventy days of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, a river village to the north of Paris, and painted dozens of canvases there in a single summer. The two villages lie in opposite directions from the capital, Giverny roughly 75 km west along the Seine, Auvers to the north, which is exactly why a combined tour is the only practical way to see both in one day without renting a car and driving yourself between them. To understand how that garden came to be, our history of Monet's garden at Giverny follows him from the farmhouse he first rented to the water lily pond he built later in life.

Two full-day tours run that loop. Despite the near-identical names, they differ in vehicle, format, group size and what the ticket price covers. Below is a guide to who each one suits, what a 10-hour day on this route actually looks like, and where the cheaper alternatives and the Versailles combo fit if Auvers is not the half of the day you care most about.

What Does A Giverny And Auvers-Sur-Oise Tour Include?

Both listed tours include entry to Monet's house and gardens and entry to the Van Gogh sites in Auvers, plus round-trip transport from a stated Paris departure point, over roughly 10 hours. The small-group listing runs a minivan capped at 8 people with a driver-guide and all entrance fees; the coach listing runs a VIP bus with a self-guided format and an English-speaking accompany, from $133 per person. Neither lists a meal.

The differences sit in the format. The Giverny Monet's Garden and Auvers-sur-Oise with Van Gogh House tour, from $251 per person for the day, moves in an air-conditioned minivan with a maximum of 8 people, a driver-guide, return transport from the 8 Av. de Villiers meeting point in the 17th arrondissement, and all entrance fees in the price. Its 4.9 rating comes from 436 reviews, which is a substantial pool for a small-group product.

The From Paris: Full-Day Monet's Giverny and Van Gogh Village Tour, from $133 per person, rated 4.7 from 171 reviews, runs as a shared coach with what the listing calls VIP bus transport, a self-guided tour with an English accompany, and entrance tickets to both the Van Gogh House and Monet's house and gardens. Its listed stops are Monet's house and gardens and Auvers-sur-Oise, and its exclusions name meals and personal expenses plainly. Both listings show free cancellation; neither lists hotel pickup, so each meets at a stated point, and the small-group listing asks you to be there at least 15 minutes early. For a closer look at how the hours actually work out, whether you stick to the gardens or add Versailles, our guide to doing Giverny as a day trip from Paris covers the details.

One point worth checking on whichever listing you book: the Maison de Van Gogh in Auvers runs a limited season, 4 March to 22 November, Wednesday to Sunday only, per the museum's own information page. A coach day that lands in Auvers on a Monday would find the room itself shut, so confirm the day of the week your date falls on before booking.

How Do The Two Auvers Combo Tours Differ In Practice?

The $251 minivan tour is an 8-person guided day with a driver-guide and all fees; the $133 coach tour is a self-guided day on a bigger vehicle with an accompany host rather than a guide. If you want commentary and a small group, the minivan justifies the gap; if you just want the logistics solved cheaply, the coach does the same route for about half the price.

Start with what a driver-guide changes. On the minivan day, the guide travels with the group, and the listing puts the guide, the transport and the entrance fees in one price, so there is nothing to buy on arrival at either site. At Monet's house the visit inside the gardens is your own; at Auvers the driver-guide frames the village before you walk it. Groups capped at 8 also mean the day bends around traffic and group pace rather than a fixed coach schedule.

The coach version is a different animal. Its listing describes a self-guided tour with English accompany: you ride with a larger group, the entrance tickets are in the price, and the "accompany" handles logistics and orientation rather than leading a guided commentary at either site. For travelers who are happy reading the site panels at the Maison de Van Gogh and wandering Monet's Clos Normand with an audio explanation from the garden's own resources, that format works, and $133 per person is the cheapest listed way to see both villages in one day.

Both days are long. Ten hours with a Paris departure means an early meeting time and a return into the city in the early evening, and Auvers comes after Giverny on both routes, so the second half of the day runs on whatever energy the first half leaves you. If that sounds like too much, the half-day alternatives covered on our Giverny half-day tour page cover Monet's garden alone in about 5 hours, and the train option on getting from Paris to Giverny lets you build your own lighter day.

What Do You Actually See At Monet's Garden On These Tours?

Monet's house and gardens at Giverny hold the pink farmhouse studio, the Clos Normand flower garden, and the water garden with the Japanese bridge and the water lily pond, which Monet built after 1893 and painted for the rest of his life. The official recommended visit is 1h30 to 2h, and both tours give you time on site in that range with entry tickets included.

The house itself is the part people underestimate. Monet moved to Giverny in 1883 and lived there until his death, and the restored interior, the blue kitchen, the collection of Japanese prints, the studio, is a walk-through rather than a long stop. The gardens are the draw: the Clos Normand, the flower garden on the house side of the road, is a planned mass of spring and summer planting that changes month by month, tulips and forget-me-nots in April, irises and peonies in May, climbing roses from June, nasturtiums carpeting the Grande Allée by September.

The water garden across the road is what most visitors came for. The pond with its Japanese bridge, the willows, the water lilies that begin blooming around July and continue into early autumn in mild years, was dug after 1893 once Monet had bought the neighboring plot and diverted the Ru stream, against some local opposition at the time. Both tours include the entry ticket, currently 13 euros adult bought directly, so the tour premium is effectively paying for transport, timing and the Auvers leg.

Two practical notes from the official site. The garden opens 10:00 to 18:00 daily from 1 April to 1 November 2026, last admission 17:30. The house sells a skip-the-line e-ticket online and recommends booking ahead at peak, as significant waits are expected on site once the online quota runs out. And the rules are strict and enforced: exit is final, no picnics, no painting or drawing, no large bags, because there is no cloakroom. Our what to see in Giverny guide covers the layout in detail, and the official practical information page lists the full season and ticket terms.

What Is There To See In Auvers-Sur-Oise And Van Gogh's Room?

Auvers-sur-Oise is the village where Van Gogh spent his final seventy days, and the key stop is the Maison de Van Gogh, the inn where he lodged and where the tiny attic room he died in is preserved. Both tours include its entry ticket, and the village around it, the church he painted, the wheat-field sites, the twin graves he shares with his brother Theo, is walkable.

The room is the emotional center of the visit. The Auberge Ravoux, as the inn was known, keeps the bare attic room under the roof as it was, unfurnished except for what the period record supports, and the entry ticket both tours carry also covers the modest exhibition spaces in the building. The museum's own season runs 4 March to 22 November, Wednesday to Sunday, so any combined day must respect both calendars: Giverny's 1 April to 1 November window is the tighter one, which means the combined season is effectively April through late October, on the days of the week when Auvers sites are open.

Around the inn, the village is a short walk. The Eglise d'Auvers, the church of the famous tilted painting, stands above the main street; the town hall; the Daubigny studio; and the wheat-field viewpoint on the plateau above town where Van Gogh painted his last canvases. Van Gogh and his brother Theo are buried side by side in the small cemetery there under ivy, a five-minute walk from the inn, and the coach listing names the visit to Van Gogh's final resting place among its inclusions explicitly.

The minivan listing does not itemize the grave visit, but with the village walkable from the inn the sites sit within a few hundred meters of each other. What the listing does promise is the small-group format: 8 people maximum, which on a day with two villages, two ticketed sites and a long drive is the difference between a day that flows and one spent waiting for a coach to reassemble. Check the listing for the current itinerary wording before booking either day.

Who Should Book The Small-Group Auvers Tour Versus The Coach?

Travelers who want commentary, a cap of 8 people and every fee bundled should take the $251 minivan tour; travelers counting budget who are content to walk both sites self-guided get the same two entries and the same route on the $133 coach. Families and pairs tend to prefer the minivan; solo travelers and tight budgets tend to the coach.

The dividing line is how much you want a guide's voice in the day. Auvers-sur-Oise rewards context: the seventy days, the rate of roughly a canvas a day, the walk between the church, the room and the field, all mean more with someone narrating it. Giverny rewards time and pacing more than narration, since the garden panels and the house's own materials are thorough. The minivan day gives you both; the coach day gives you neither but leaves you standing in both places with a ticket in hand.

Budget framing helps here. The two listings sit at $133 and $251 per person, and the gap between them is the price of a guide, a small vehicle and bundled fees, roughly doubling the per-person cost of the same two entries. Against that, the entries bought directly are 13 euros at Monet's house plus the Maison de Van Gogh's own ticket price, so both tours carry a real premium for transport and coordination across a day no direct train line can replicate: Giverny and Auvers are on different rail branches out of Paris, and connecting them independently means backtracking through the capital.

There is a middle path if the minivan price stings but the coach sounds too big. Small-group Giverny days capped at 8, covered in our small-group Giverny tour guide, run from $148 to $209 per person, and pairing one of those with a separate Auvers visit from Paris by train is how some travelers split the same ground over two days instead of one.

How Does The Rouen Day Trip Compare To The Auvers Combo?

The Rouen day, from $291 per person, links Giverny with Vernon and Rouen by minivan in 8 to 13 hours, with hotel pickup listed and free time in Rouen for lunch, so it trades the Van Gogh village for Normandy's cathedral city. It suits travelers whose interest is Monet's river world rather than Van Gogh's final weeks.

Rouen is the city whose cathedral front Monet painted in series, and the listed day trip to Giverny, Vernon and Rouen builds the outing around that: Monet's house and studio, the Clos Normand and the water garden, a photo stop at the old mill of Vernon and the Château des Tourelles on the Seine, then time in Rouen itself. The listing includes hotel pickup and drop-off in Paris in a comfortable minivan, a driver and guide accompanying the day, and free time in Rouen for lunch and shopping; the exclusions note that pickup starts at 7:30 am and drop-off lands after 20:00 depending on traffic. Its 4.7 rating comes from 26 reviews, a small pool, so weigh the recent feedback on the live listing rather than the headline number. If the village's name has you unsure how to say it out loud, our plain-letter guide to pronouncing Giverny covers the French sounds and the slips most English speakers make.

Compared with the Auvers combos, the shape of the day is similar in length but different in texture. Auvers is a small village walk wrapped around one modest museum; Rouen is a full city with the cathedral, the old quarter and a restaurant scene, and the day leans on free time there rather than a second ticketed site. The Rouen listing's 8 to 13 hour range also signals real variability, depending on traffic on the way back into Paris.

What About Combining Giverny With Versailles Instead?

The Giverny and Versailles guided day trip runs 11.5 hours from $144 per person by coach, with skip-the-line Versailles entry wording, an expert guide inside the palace and entry to Monet's home and gardens, rated 4.5 from 1,591 reviews. It fits travelers who want royal grandeur over Van Gogh intimacy, and it is the most-reviewed combo of the three.

Versailles is the other natural pairing with Giverny, and the listed guided day trip from Paris covers both in one push: round-trip coach, an English-speaking expert guide inside the palace, the listing's skip-the-line entry wording for the château and gardens, plus the entry ticket to Monet's home and gardens with a self-guided audio app available in 10 languages. It departs from the Église Notre-Dame de Compassion meeting point in the 17th arrondissement, lists free cancellation, and excludes food and hotel pickup plainly.

Timing is the trade. Versailles days need the palace hours to align, and the Palace and Estate of Trianon are closed Mondays, per the official practical information page, so a Monday booking reshapes that half of the day. The Auvers combo instead runs against the Maison de Van Gogh's Wednesday-to-Sunday calendar. In both cases the day of the week is the single most common planning error, so check it against your date before booking anything. Our fuller comparison lives on the Giverny and Versailles tour page.

When Can You Book These Tours, And When Should You Not?

All these days run inside Monet's garden season, 1 April to 1 November, since the Giverny half closes from 2 November to 31 March, and the Auvers sites themselves keep a Wednesday-to-Sunday week, 4 March to 22 November. Book spring through October, check the day of the week, and expect May to August to be the busiest months in the garden.

The season logic is simple: the combined day exists only while both halves are open, which in practice means April through the end of October, on days when Auvers is receiving visitors. The reopening date for the following Giverny season has not been published, so check the official site for next year's calendar if you are planning ahead of an announcement. Neither village runs in winter.

Within the season, the monthly pattern matters more than most first-time visitors expect. May and June bring the wisteria on the Japanese bridge, the irises and the peonies, and the biggest crowds. July and August are hot and busy, with water lilies at their best from late June through August. September softens, with nasturtiums carpeting the main alley and dahlias holding, and October trades flowers for autumn foliage on the willows and liquidambars, with shorter queues. The detail sits in our best time to visit Giverny guide.

One caution for any 10-hour day in high summer: the drive back into Paris in August traffic can stretch, and the Rouen listing is explicit that drop-off may land after 20:00. Plan nothing tight for the evening you return. And if a public holiday falls in your dates, garden booking is officially recommended on weekends and holidays even for independent visitors, so tour seats on those days go faster too.

Is There A Cheaper Way To See Both Villages Yourself?

Yes, but it costs a day each: the direct train from Paris Saint-Lazare to Vernon-Giverny takes about 45 minutes to an hour and fares run about 6 to 24 euros, with a 5-euro shuttle from the station to Giverny, while Auvers is a separate suburban rail line out of Paris. Two relaxed days beat one rushed day if your schedule allows.

The independent Giverny day is well documented and cheap: TER trains run roughly 21 to 27 times a day, the SN'go! shuttle meets them at Vernon-Giverny station at 5 euros one way or 10 euros return from April to November, seats subject to availability, and the garden ticket is 13 euros adult at the gate, with on-site sales from 9:30. Check timetables before you travel because works are on the line. Full detail, including the bike option on the green way from Vernon, is on our Paris to Giverny by train guide.

Auvers independently is also possible from Paris, but the connection between the two villages by public transport is poor: they sit on different lines radiating from the capital, and midweek you would spend close to three hours of the day on trains back through Paris. That is the real argument for the combined tour, and it is why the combo listings earn their premium: they solve a routing problem the rail network does not. See the full tour comparison on the homepage for the complete range of options.

The hybrid many travelers land on is a small-group Giverny-only day, from $148 per person, capped at 8, plus a separate half day in Auvers from Paris by train. If Van Gogh's room is the part you would cut when tired at hour seven, split the days. The comparison of all the formats, prices and inclusions sits in one place on the tour picker.

Common Questions About The Giverny And Auvers-Sur-Oise Tour