Musée Carnavalet

The Musée Carnavalet is the history museum of the city of Paris, and it occupies two adjoining mansions in the Marais, on the rue de Sévigné, the street named after the writer who lived in one of them. The older of the two, the Hôtel Carnavalet, was built in the 1540s in the French Renaissance style, with sculpted decoration by Jean Goujon, one of the leading sculptors of the age, and its courtyard, with a statue of Louis XIV, is one of the most elegant in the district. In 1677 Madame de Sévigné, famous for her witty letters to her daughter, moved into the house and stayed until her death in 1696. The second building, the Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, dates from the late seventeenth century and was joined to the museum later. The city of Paris bought the Hôtel Carnavalet in the 1860s, during the transformation of the capital under Baron Haussmann, and opened it as a museum in 1880, which makes it one of the oldest municipal museums in France.

The collection is vast, running to hundreds of thousands of objects, and it tells the story of Paris from prehistoric times to the present. After a long closure for renovation, the museum reopened in 2021 with more than a hundred rooms, newly arranged in chronological order, and it is easy to follow. Among the highlights are the rooms devoted to the French Revolution, with paintings, prints, weapons and objects relating to the fall of the Bastille, the end of the monarchy and the Terror, and personal belongings of the royal family during its imprisonment. Rooms from demolished mansions, with their panelling and painted decoration, have been re-erected inside the museum, so that visitors walk through period interiors from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A famous jewellery shop of the early twentieth century, designed by Alphonse Mucha, and the cork-lined bedroom of the writer Marcel Proust are among the more unexpected treats.

The museum also shows the changing face of the city, with models, maps, signs and paintings of Paris at different times, from the Roman town of Lutetia to the nineteenth-century boulevards. The portrait of Louis XIV by Antoine Coysevox and the shop sign of the cabaret Le Chat Noir are among the most popular pieces, and the garden courtyards make a calm place for a break.

Admission to the permanent collections has been free, though special exhibitions need a ticket and advance booking is advisable, so check the current rules before you go. The museum is in the middle of the Marais, within a short walk of the Place des Vosges, the Centre Pompidou and the Seine, and it is served by several metro lines.

Allow two hours or more. It suits history lovers, families and anyone who wants to understand the long story of Paris. The museum is usually closed on Mondays.