Musée de la Vie Romantique, Paris

The Musée de la Vie Romantique is a literary museum housed in the former home and studio of painter Ary Scheffer, at 16 rue Chaptal in Paris’s Nouvelle Athènes. The main pavilion dates from the 1830s, and its rooms preserve the setting of a place where artists, writers, musicians, and political figures gathered. Scheffer and his daughter Cornélia held Friday salons here, welcoming George Sand and Frédéric Chopin, along with Eugène Delacroix, Ingres, Lamartine, Liszt, Rossini, and Pauline Viardot.

Later visitors included Dickens, Turgenev, and Gounod. Look toward the displays devoted to George Sand: among the family portraits, possessions, jewellery, and keepsakes is an especially intimate connection to her circle—casts made from Sand’s arm and Chopin’s hand. Her own unusual watercolours, called dendrites, are also preserved here.

Rooms devoted to Scheffer and his contemporaries contain paintings, sculpture, and decorative objects, while material concerning Ernest Renan reflects his family link to the household. The property became a museum in 1987 after renovation by Jacques Garcia, and it reopened in 2026 after further restoration and a renewed presentation focused on Scheffer and Romanticism.