After you’ve visited the several major museums of Paris for the nth time, you might wonder—what’s else is there to see? Of course, there are lots more to see and the Musée Carnavalet tops the list.
Enjoy a tune while browsing.
Paris is not merely the capital of France and a modern metropolitan city—it is also a place so storied and mythologized that an entire museum exists solely to trace its past.
The Musée Carnavalet, nestled in the heart of Le Marais district, stands as the safekeeper of the city’s memory, preserving centuries of art, architecture, politics, and daily life. The permanent collection is free of charge and can be accessed without booking.
A statue of Louis XIV stands in the stone courtyard of the museum, framed by Renaissance architecture and bas-reliefs
Housed in two adjoining Renaissance mansions—the Hôtel Carnavalet and the Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau—the museum itself is part of the story it tells. Its origins date back to 1880, when the city wisely decided to collect and display artifacts that captured the spirit and transformation of Paris through the ages.
Ornate stone façade of Musée Carnavalet with sculpted allegories, maritime emblems, and neoclassical pediment.
This 19th century painting uses a woman to symbolizes Lutetia which is a Gallo-Roman outpost that became Paris.
A Gallic tribe called the Parisii, lived in the Île de la Cité during the 3rd century BCE. Lutetia may have derived from a Celtic word for “marsh” or “mud,” referring to the swampy terrain. The Romans referred to the city as Lutetia pariosum, “Lutetia of the Parisii”.
Under Clovis I (late 5th century), the Frankish king who made Paris his capital, the name Paris was firmly established.
On four levels, the museum contains over 625,000 items dating from prehistory to the present. Paintings, sculptures, scale models, shop signs, drawings, engravings, posters, medals and coins, historical objects and souvenirs, photographs, wood paneling, interior decorations and furniture combine to present the history of the capital.
Galeries des Enseignes – The Signs Gallery greets visitors on the ground floor (niveau 0).
Signs of the various trades that shaped the urban landscape. It is meant to evoke the feeling of what it must have been like to stroll along the streets of Paris from one shop to another.
“The Calls of Hawkers” (Les Cries de Paris) – street vendors known for their cries was painted in 1634.
On the first level, the museum reassembled 17th and 18th-century salons, filled with period furniture, wood paneling, and ornate decor, transporting visitors into the private lives of Parisian aristocrats, revolutionaries, and bourgeois families.
Louis XIV encouraged artistic creations, in particular the establishment of Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1648. Charles Le Brun served as a court painter to Louis XIV, who declared him “the greatest French artist of all time”.
This room was decorated by Charles Le Brun in 1652 for the mansion belonging to Louis Barbier, Abbey de la Rivière, located on Place Royale (now 14 Place des Vosges).
The most precious elements of the salon from La Rivière was moved and reinstalled in the museum in 1878.
Parisian interiors from the second half of the 18th century are presented in a series of rooms. A number of installations are dedicated to creations by the neo-classical architect – Claude-Nicolas Ledoux.
The paneling from the salon of Hotel d’Uzès (1767, a large hôtels particuliers now demolished), carved to the designs of Ledoux, is preserved.
Connecting two levels is the Escalier de Luynes, originally belonged to the Hôtel du duc de Luynes (another hôtels particuliers), constructed in 1660–1661 by architect Pierre Le Muet for the Duchess of Chevreuse. It represents the height of 18th-century Parisian taste—combining theatrical perspective, ornamental grandeur, and social elegance.
In 1747–1748, decor specialists Paolo Antonio Brunetti and his son installed trompe‑l’œil murals directly onto the stone walls, depicting elegant figures—noble ladies and cavaliers—set within a colonnaded park under a blue sky.
The Hôtel de Luynes was demolished around 1900 to make way for new boulevards, but the staircase was preserved and reassembled at the Musée Carnavalet between 1909 and 1911, purchased and installed by the City of Paris.
Paris is built on layers—a medieval capital that was riddled with plagues, a cradle of the Enlightenment, a crucible of revolution with empire and resistance. The city has reinvented itself countless times, each era leaving its mark. We can see a lot of it here.
This is Part 1 of 2 posts on the Musée Carnavalet in Paris. Part 2 is here.