A short walk along the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, the quai Branly is Paris's museum of the indigenous and non-European arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas — masks, textiles, sculpture, and instruments drawn from a collection of some 370,000 objects. The 2006 building by Jean Nouvel is as much a draw as the contents: a long structure raised on stilts, wrapped in a living wall of greenery and approached through a wild garden.
The dimly lit, deliberately atmospheric galleries divide opinion, but the objects are extraordinary and the temporary exhibitions consistently strong. It is an easy and rewarding counterpoint to a morning at the tower, and far less crowded than the city's headline museums.