The Musée Carnavalet is dedicated entirely to the history of Paris, from its Gallo-Roman origins to the twentieth century. It occupies two adjoining Renaissance mansions in Le Marais, the Hôtel Carnavalet and the Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, and the buildings are as interesting as their contents. The permanent collection is free, one reason it is less crowded than it deserves to be.
The museum holds Marcel Proust's bedroom, reconstructed from his apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann. It holds the shop sign from the Café de Foy, where the news of the Bastille's fall was first heard in 1789. It holds scale models of Paris at every point in its history. It is the most complete account of the city in existence.
What you will see
The set pieces. Marcel Proust's cork-lined bedroom, reassembled after his death with its original furniture, the room in which he wrote À la recherche du temps perdu, and the objects and documents of the Revolutionary years from 1789 to 1799, among them pieces connected to its leading figures.
The city and the house. The history of Parisian commerce told through shop signs and merchant objects across four centuries, set inside the Hôtel Carnavalet itself, where the writer Madame de Sévigné lived for twenty years, one of the finest Renaissance buildings in Paris.
Proust's bedroom · the Revolution · the Renaissance mansions
Pépin's advice
This tour pairs naturally with Le Marais. The museum is in the heart of the quarter, and a morning that combines the two makes for one of the most complete half days in Paris.
Free entry is not a reason to rush. The museum is large, and the temptation is to cover too much ground. The Revolutionary period and the Proust bedroom are the anchors, and the rest can follow.
