Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Musée Carnavalet is a museum devoted to Paris, housed in two adjoining historic mansions: the Hôtel Carnavalet and the former Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau. The ensemble brings the city’s story into rooms, objects, paintings, furniture, and decorative interiors. Its permanent route presents 3,800 works and objects across 3,900 square metres, arranged through periods reaching from prehistory to contemporary times.

The oldest mansion was built between 1548 and 1560 for Jacques de Ligneris, with Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon connected to its creation. Jean Goujon’s workshop produced much of the Renaissance sculpture on the facade and portals, so the stone ornament you can see here belongs to the building’s own history. Look at the statue of Louis XIV in Roman dress: Antoine Coysevox made it, and it is among the very few surviving images of the king from before the Revolution.

The museum opened to the public in 1880 after Baron Haussmann encouraged the city to acquire the mansion. The adjoining Hôtel Le Peletier entered the museum in 1989. After a major renovation, Carnavalet reopened in 2021 with renewed galleries and expanded collections. Inside, the charred door from the burned Hôtel de Ville preserves a direct trace of the destruction that consumed the museum’s original collection in 1871.