Bookings open for mega Monet exhibition

Five months before the opening of the first major Claude Monet exhibition in 30 years, Paris's Grand Palais on Thursday announced the opening of bookings from next week.

Scheduled to run from September 22 to January 24, 2011, the show will be the biggest dedicated to the Impressionist master since 1980, gathering 200 works from both French and foreign museums.

With at least half a million visitors expected, Internet bookings open from Monday, April 19 on www.monet2010.com.

The show, a major event on this year's Paris arts calendar, will trace the 19th century painter's long career, from his first landscapes in Normandy and in the Paris region in the 1870s through to his iconic depictions of his garden in Giverny at the end of the century.

A major Picasso show at the Grand Palais in 2008 pulled in 784,000 visitors.