Musée de la Musique

The Musée de la Musique is the national museum of musical instruments, and it stands in the Cité de la Musique, a complex of concert halls and teaching spaces at the edge of the Parc de la Villette, in the north-east of Paris. The Cité de la Musique was designed by the architect Christian de Portzamparc and opened in the mid-1990s, and the museum was inaugurated in 1997. Next to it, the Philharmonie de Paris, a large concert hall with a striking silver exterior by Jean Nouvel, opened in 2015, and the two institutions share the site and many of their facilities. The museum is part of the family of French national museums, and it carries the official label Musée de France.

The collection began in the nineteenth century at the Paris Conservatoire, where a teacher and collector gathered instruments for study, and it has grown into one of the largest and most important in the world, with thousands of instruments and works of art. It covers the history of Western music from the sixteenth century to the present, with violins, lutes, harpsichords, pianos, wind instruments and more. Among the treasures are violins by the great makers of Cremona, such as Antonio Stradivari and the Amati family, harpsichords of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with painted decoration, and pianos by French makers such as Érard and Pleyel, the instruments that Chopin and Liszt knew. The instruments are displayed with paintings, sculptures and documents, so visitors can see how music fitted into the life of each period.

The visit is guided by audio equipment that plays recordings of the instruments as you pass, so you can hear the sounds of the pieces you see, which is a great help in understanding the differences between a harpsichord and an early piano, for example. Another part of the collection looks at instruments from other parts of the world, including Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, with a view to showing how music has developed in different cultures and how they have influenced one another. The museum also organises temporary exhibitions, some of them on popular themes such as video-game music, and holds concerts, workshops and activities for families. A children's area, the Philharmonie des enfants, invites younger visitors to try instruments and play with sounds.

The museum is near the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, the Parc de la Villette and the Canal Saint-Martin, so it can be combined with a family day. Check the opening hours, ticket prices and any limits on access before you go.

Allow two hours. It suits music lovers, families and school groups.