The novel is set in Paris, France, and predominantly takes place within the halls of Paris’s most famous museums. In Part 1, Mona and Henry (Dadé) visit the Louvre. The Louvre was once a royal palace, which was converted into a museum in 1793 following the end of the French Revolution. Now known as a universal museum, the Louvre has “eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Paintings; Sculptures; Decorative Arts; Prints and Drawings; and Islamic Art” and displays roughly 35,000 works of art (“Musée du Louvre.” Paris Je T’aime). During their visits, Dadé introduces Mona to the works of famous artists from the Renaissance, including Botticelli, da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, and others on through to the 18th and 19th centuries.

In Part 2, Mona and Dadé continue their art history lessons at the Musée d’Orsay. The Musée d’Orsay began as a train station, formerly known as Gare d’Orsay. Built in 1900, the structure was slated for demolition in the 1970s due to engineering issues, but was saved and converted into a museum in 1986. Here, Mona learns about 19th-century art, viewing works from artists such as Gustave Courbet, Rosa Bonheur, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Vincent Van Gogh. The museum primarily displays works of French art spanning from 1848 through 1914, and houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionistic art in the world, which explains why Mona discovers famous Impressionists like Monet here.

In Part 3, they move to the Centre Georges-Pompidou. The Center Georges-Pompidou was opened in 1971 at the then-French president Georges Pompidou’s request, and features unconventional architecture designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. The museum itself includes a Public Information Library, the most expansive modern art museum in Europe, and a musical and acoustic research center (also known as IRCAM). As Mona discovers, the museum specializes in modern and contemporary art, helping to round off her art education by introducing her to works from more recent decades. She gains exposure to works that cross over from the 19th century into the Modernist movement and the latter 20th century, including those by Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Pablo Picasso, as well as many others.

The works they study in each museum capture the breadth and scope of the artwork which Paris’s prominent museums house, including works of art from around the world. As they move from the Renaissance masters to more contemporary works, Dadé also helps Mona develop a sense of how art has developed over time. Dadé chooses to take Mona to these three notable museums because he hopes to implant beautiful and meaningful memories in her mind before she potentially loses her sight for good. An amateur art historian himself, Dadé is “assailed with hundreds of images,” such as “the rocky outcrops behind Mona Lisa, the monkey carved at the back of Michelangelo’s Dying Slave, the alarmed expression of the blond child to the right of David’s Oath of the Horatii” (18) that spring up “like so many signs calling him, asking to be seen, heard, understood, loved” (18). He regards Paris’s expansive artistic storehouse as an organic entryway into an historical, aesthetic, and emotional education for his granddaughter.