Archives Nationales
60 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, Paris, Phone - 0140276096
Housed in the Hôtel de Soubise, the Archives Nationales is a magnet for scholars of the Merovingian period. Highlights of the collection include the Edict of Nantes, the Treaty of Westphalia, the wills of Louis XIV and Napoléon, the Declaration of Human Rights, and Louis XVI's diary. The buildings housing the collection, the Hôtel de Soubise and the Hôtel de Rohan, are also four-star attractions. Connoisseurs of decorative arts flock to the former to see the apartments of the prince and princess de Soubise, whose rooms were among the first examples of the rococo---the lighter style that followed the Baroque opulence of Louis XIV. Métro: Rambuteau.
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Centre Pompidou
Pl. Georges-Pompidou, Paris, Phone - 0144781233
The futuristic, funnel-top Pompidou Center was built in the mid-1970s and named in honor of former French president Georges Pompidou. More than 8 million visitors a year---five times more than intended---come to the Pompidou to enjoy musical performances and to see visual arts exhibitions at the Musée National d'Art Moderne (Modern Art Museum), which covers 20th-century art from Fauvism and Cubism to postwar abstraction and video constructions. Other highlights include the rooftop restaurant and the glass-tubed elevator that snakes up the side of the building.
On the sloping piazza below is the Atelier Brancusi (Brancusi's Studio), four light-filled studios packed with works by Romanian-born sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Métro: Rambuteau.
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Louvre
Palais du Louvre, Paris, Phone - 0140205151
This is the world's greatest art museum, and certainly one of the largest. The extraordinary collections are divided into Asian antiquities, Egyptian antiquities, Greek and Roman antiquities, sculpture, objets d'art, paintings, and prints and drawings. The quality and the sheer variety are overwhelming. The number one attraction is Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatic Mona Lisa (La Joconde to the French). A highlight of the ancient Greek collection is the legendary Venus de Milo, from the 2nd century BC. Try to make repeat visits---the Louvre is about half price on Sunday (free the first Sunday of each month) and after 3 PM on other days. Tip: it's faster to enter through the Carrousel du Louvre mall on rue de Rivoli than through the pyramid. Métro: Palais-Royal.
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Musée Carnavalet
23 rue de Sévigné, Paris, Phone - 0142722113
To get a picture of the eternal yet ever-changing face of Paris through the ages, head to these two adjacent mansions in the heart of the Marais. Devoted to Parisian history, they include many salons filled with antiques and historic artifacts. Maps, plans, portraits, busts and other artifacts dating from the city's origins up to 1789 are in the Hôtel Carnavalet, and material from 1789 to the present is in the Hôtel Peletier St-Fargeau. The section on the Revolution includes riveting models of guillotines and objects associated with the royal family's final days. Métro: St-Paul.
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Musée d'Orsay
1 rue de la Légion d'Honneur, Paris, Phone - 0140494884
This museum's collection includes many of the most famous Impressionist and postimpressionist paintings in the world, and they're housed in a renovated Belle Epoque train station that is a work of art in itself. Exhibits take up three floors, and highlights include Monet's Les Coquelicots (Poppy Fields) and Renoir's Le Moulin de la Galette (Biscuit Windmill). Works by Postimpressionists---Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec---are on the top floor. Métro: Solférino; RER: Musée d'Orsay.
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Musée Jacquemart-André
158 bd. Haussmann, Paris. Phone - 0142890491
Often compared to New York's Frick Collection, this grand dwelling, built between 1869 and 1875, found Hollywood fame when used as Gaston Lachaille's mansion in the 1958 musical Gigi. Art from the Italian Renaissance and 18th-century France compete for attention here. Note the Tiepolo frescoes in the staircase and on the dining-room ceiling. Salons in the "Louis XVI--Empress" style (favored by Empress Eugénie) are hung with great paintings, including Uccello's Saint George Slaying the Dragon and Rembrandt's Pilgrims of Emmaus. Métro: St-Philippe-du-Roule.
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Musée Marmottan--Claude Monet
2 rue Louis-Boilly, Paris, Phone - 0142240702
Set in a sumptuous 19th-century Empire-style mansion, Paris's "other" Impressionist museum (after the Musée d'Orsay) has an extensive collection of works by Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley. The first and second floors boast magnificent medieval illuminated manuscripts and spectacular antique furnishings. Métro: La Muette.
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Musée National du Moyen-Age
6 pl. Paul-Painlevé, Paris, Phone - 0153737800
Often referred to as the Museé de Cluny, this showcase of art from the Middle Ages features a stunning array of tapestries, including the world-famous Dame à la Licorne, woven in the 15th or 16th century. Added attractions are the mansion's gardens, which overflow with 58 species of flora and fauna depicted in the Dame à la Licorne tapestries. The museum is in the 15th-century Hôtel de Cluny. Métro: Cluny--La Sorbonne.
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Musée Nissim de Camondo
63 rue de Monceau, Paris, Phone - 0153890640
Nineteenth-century businessman Monsieur Moïse de Camondo built this villa in the style of the Petit Trianon and furnished it with some of the most exquisite furniture, boisieries (carved wood panels), and bibelots of the mid- to late-18th century. Named after his son, who died in combat during World War I, the building and its collection are an idiomatic expression of 18th-century taste and sensibility. If you want to see these enchanting salons in all their candlelit glory, view a video of Valmont, Milos Forman's much-overlooked 1989 filmed version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Métro: Villiers.
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Musée Picasso
5 rue de Thorigny, Paris. Phone - 0142712521
The French government restored the 17th-century mansion that houses the Picasso Museum, which exhibits the paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, ceramics, and other works of art given to the government by Picasso's heirs. This is the largest collection of works by Picasso in the world, offering examples from every period of his life: a grand total of 230 paintings, 1,500 drawings, and nearly 1,700 prints, as well as works by Cézanne, Miró, Renoir, Braque, Degas, and Matisse. Métro: St-Sébastien.
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Musée Rodin
77 rue de Varenne, Paris. Phone - 0144186110
The splendid Hôtel Biron, with its spacious vestibule, broad staircase, and patrician salons lined with boiseries (antique wood paneling), retains much of its 18th-century atmosphere and makes a somewhat startling setting for the sculpture of Auguste Rodin (1840--1917). You'll doubtless recognize the seated Le Penseur (The Thinker), with his elbow resting on his knee, and the passionate Le Baiser (The Kiss). Don't skip the large garden behind the house, exceptional for both its rosebushes (more than 2,000 of them, representing 100 varieties) and its sculpture. Métro: Varenne.
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Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs
107 rue de Rivoli, Paris Phone - 0144555750
A must for lovers of fashion and the decorative arts, this northwestern wing of the Louvre building houses three famously chic museums: the Musée de la Mode, devoted to costumes and accessories from the 18th century; the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, a showcase of furniture, tapestries, glassware and paintings from the Middle Ages through Napoléon's time and beyond; and the recently opened Musée de la Publicité, whose changing exhibitions of advertisements are less head-turning than architect Jean Nouvel's brash decor, which combines metal walls and exposed brickwork, faded gilding, black-lacquered parquet floors, and leopard-skin pillars. Métro: Palais-Royal.
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