Musée Carnavalet

Free history museum tracing Paris from the Stone Age to the 20th century

Address 23 Rue de Sévigné, 75003 Paris
Admission Free
Opening Hours Tue–Sun 10am–6pm; closed Mon
Website www.carnavalet.paris.fr

The Musée Carnavalet is the history of Paris told through objects, paintings, and reconstructed interiors — from Gallo-Roman artefacts to Belle Époque shop fronts and Marcel Proust's cork-lined bedroom, transferred intact from his apartment on Boulevard Haussmann. The museum occupies two Renaissance mansions in the Marais, connected by a courtyard.

It is free and largely overlooked by tourists, which makes it one of the best deals in the city. The rooms devoted to the French Revolution are particularly strong, with extraordinary painted portraits and artefacts from the Terror. The reconstructed Art Nouveau jewellery shop by Alphonse Mucha is extraordinary.

things to do museum le marais
A story
Marcel Proust's cork-lined bedroom from his apartment on Boulevard Haussmann is in the Carnavalet — he had the walls lined with cork to block noise while writing À la recherche du temps perdu. When he died in 1922 his housekeeper sold the furniture piecemeal; the bedroom was only assembled here from scattered pieces.