This text explores the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris, the town’s oldest municipal museum, important for anybody who actually needs to grasp Paris, its revolutions, its reinventions and its each day life by means of the centuries.
A pair of earrings stopped me chilly.
They had been delicate, nearly fairly, till I noticed what they had been: tiny gold guillotines, blades poised mid-swing, suspended from dainty hooks.
These had been precise style equipment and ladies wore them through the Reign of Terror – a interval of mass executions through the French Revolution – both to indicate their help or simply to remain alive. (I am unsure which is extra disturbing).
They normally sit quietly in a case on the Carnavalet Museum – Histoire de Paris, the capital’s sprawling, often-overlooked archive of itself.
Why ‘normally’? As a result of displays rotate and typically they’re changed by different objects.
A sadly blurry photograph of the guillotine earrings – and after I returned to take a greater shot, I used to be advised that they had been put away ©OffbeatFranceNot like many museums, Carnavalet doesn’t force-feed you what it’s essential know. As a substitute, it exhibits you what Paris has left behind, a few of it unsettling, and allows you to resolve for your self what to remove from it. It’s the closest factor the town has to a reminiscence, which qualifies it as one of many extra uncommon museums in Paris.
NOTE: Pages on this web site could include affiliate hyperlinks, which help this web site. See full Privateness Coverage right here.
A museum of fragments
The Carnavalet isn’t grand within the ordinary sense.
It has no towering glass pyramid, and no crowds with cameras. It’s a reasonably discreet institution housed in two Renaissance mansions within the Marais neighborhood, not removed from the Place des Vosges.
It opened in 1880 because the Musée de l’Histoire de Paris and reopened in 2021 after 5 years of restoration, a a lot brighter and extra accessible place, however nonetheless a little bit of a labyrinth.
And possibly that’s the purpose.
You don’t tour the Carnavalet, you wander by means of it, from room to room, questioning if you happen to’re headed in the best route, solely to move the identical displays two or 3 times.
Fairly than the creative genius we have come to anticipate in museums, it is a journey by means of the completely different phases of the town’s historical past. You may discover family objects, protest indicators, royal portraits, graffiti – if it occurred in Paris sooner or later, chances are high you will discover remnants of it right here.
Earlier than we get to the displays, it helps to grasp what this museum is making an attempt to do. Paris has at all times been greater than only a metropolis, extra of an thought or a logo, and that concept has shifted all through the centuries because it bounced between kings and revolutionaries, artists and bureaucrats.
This instability is captured by the Carnavalet by means of the issues folks left behind, revealing the accumulations of historical past. Some are tiny, from a pamphlet or a ground tile to a slogan scrawled on a nicely. All this provides as much as this particular assortment of what Parisians have documented or tried to erase about themselves every time the town reinvented itself.
Right here, then, is a unfastened interpretation of the seven ages of Paris.
1. Historic Paris: Earlier than there was a metropolis
One of many oldest objects within the museum is a ship: a pirogue carved from a single tree, relationship again to 2700 BC. Pulled from the Seine, it’s a reminder that this was as soon as a watery land of fishermen and marshes.
The museum’s archaeological part showcases Lutetia, the Roman precursor to Paris, with mosaics, cash, and even a funerary stele for a Roman citizen named Lucius Julius.
These had been the beginnings of Paris: muddy, business, and doused with the tart scent of wooden smoke.
A part of the Roman assortment of the Carnavalet ©OffbeatFrance2. Medieval and Renaissance Paris
From there, you progress into the age of saints and stone.
Search for the statue of Sainte Geneviève, Paris’s patron saint, mentioned to have saved the town from the Huns. Close by are unique gargoyles from Notre-Dame, Sixteenth-century tapestries, and even a working astrolabe from the 1400s, a uncommon mixture of artwork and astronomy.
There’s a portrait of King Francis I, whose Renaissance ambitions reshaped the French court docket by importing the Renaissance and giving Paris its first style of grandeur.
Portray within the Carnavalet of Sainte Geneviève, Paris’s patron saint, defending the town from the specter of Attila and the Huns3. The French Revolution: A metropolis comes undone
That is, a minimum of for me, probably the most haunting sections.
That is believed to be one in all Marie-Antoinette’s sneakers, rescued from the chaos of the RevolutionThere’s a mannequin of the Bastille, full with key. There’s graffiti scratched by prisoners and pamphlets calling for the king’s head. And people guillotine earrings, with their trace of violence.
The displays do not glorify or condemn the French Revolution – they simply lay it out so that you can resolve.
The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was an Enlightenment blueprint for liberty, drafted through the Revolution however nonetheless current in constitutions right nowWHAT ARE THE SEVEN STAGES OF PARIS?
Historians typically communicate of the seven phases of Paris. It’s not an official chronology, however a helpful framework for viewing the town’s fixed reinvention:
- Roman Lutetia – A Roman settlement with boards, public baths, and straight roads that also affect the structure of the Latin Quarter right now
- Medieval Paris – A metropolis of church buildings and students, centered on Notre-Dame and the Sorbonne, with slim, crowded streets
- Renaissance and Royal Paris – A interval of royal affect, seen in formal gardens and grand structure
- Revolutionary Paris – A metropolis shaken by revolt, the place the streets noticed protests, executions and the start of latest political concepts
- Haussmann’s Paris – An enormous Nineteenth-century redesign that changed medieval streets with huge boulevards, parks and matching buildings
- The Belle Époque – A time of energetic cafés, cabarets and stylish design that lined up social inequality and rising colonial energy
- Twentieth-century Paris – Formed by struggle, resistance and protests, the town skilled occupation, liberation and the breakup of France’s colonial empire
My very own phases are barely completely different however all in all, these are the phases by means of which we will see a Paris in perpetual motion.
4. Paris Rebuilt: Haussmann and the Second Empire
The following rooms leap to the Nineteenth century and the novel city surgical procedure carried out by Baron Haussmann underneath Napoleon III. Extensive boulevards, uniform façades and fuel lighting had been all a part of a managed, trendy Paris.
As Haussmann swept by means of, dwellings had been levelled and the Carnavalet exhibits us what was misplaced: wood store indicators, salvaged furnishings, and full rooms ripped from houses earlier than demolition. It’s straightforward to admire Haussmann’s clear strains however more durable to face their human price.
There’s additionally a scale mannequin of the Opéra Garnier, and pictures of the bustling Halles market, lengthy earlier than it grew to become the sanitized Discussion board des Halles.
One of many many photos on the Carnavalet of Paris earlier than Haussmann started altering the face of the town5. The Commune and the Siege of Paris
It is a darker room.
Listed here are shell fragments from the Prussian siege of 1870, a crimson flag from the short-lived Paris Commune (a worker-led authorities in Paris), satirical caricatures of politicians, and pictures of a revolt that lasted solely weeks.
The folks of Paris tried to manipulate themselves for some time, and failed. The Carnavalet lets us see what was left of that experiment.
6. Belle Époque and Artwork Nouveau
With the arrival of the Belle Époque, the “superficial” gaiety of Paris makes its entrance.
A gallery crammed with work by Jean Béraud captures the bustle of boulevards and cafés. A poster for the Moulin Rouge screams colour and power. One other pronounces a brand new division retailer: La Belle Jardinière.
That is Paris within the age of spectacle and consumerism, elegant however scratch the floor and you will find loads of forces at play.
Fouquet’s store reconstructed on the Carnavalet ©OffbeatFranceFew rooms are extra lovely than the reconstruction of Georges Fouquet’s jewellery boutique, designed by Alphonse Mucha. All curves and lightweight, it’s Artwork Nouveau at its peak.
You’ll additionally discover Métro entrances by Hector Guimard, ornamental vases by Émile Gallé, and a serene (however theatric) portrait of Sarah Bernhardt.
That is the Paris the world fell in love with — or thought it did.
A portray within the Carnavalet exhibits the Lapin Agile, a Nineteenth-century cabaret in Montmartre that drew artists like Picasso, Modigliani, Apollinaire and Utrillo
Signal for Le Chat Noir, Montmartre’s well-known Nineteenth-century cabaret and hub of bohemian Paris7. The Twentieth Century: Warfare, resistance and protest
The museum continues its travels into the Twentieth century with shows of World Warfare I helmets, Resistance newspapers, and pictures of the Liberation.
You’ll see posters from Might 1968, calling college students and employees to the barricades with their crimson and black slogans. Different shows mirror a extra trendy Paris of immigration and id, with pleasure flags and the voices of latest arrivals shaping the town.
Once more, a reinvention, and Paris is not completed but.
Poster from the Might 1968 protests on the Citroën manufacturing unit, calling for help of the proletarian resistance throughout France’s nationwide employee and scholar rebellion ©Atelier de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-ArtsEarlier than you go
Regardless of its unbelievable richness, many guests skip the Carnavalet, actually because they do not know a lot about it. There are not any Mona Lisas right here, however there aren’t lengthy strains both.
If you wish to actually perceive Paris – not simply the buildings however the individuals who lived and cherished in them – that is the place you go (this is their official web site for all the sensible info).
I will admit it is not the best museum to go to. It may be a bit complicated, some rooms are quiet and unsettling, and others could also be a bit overwhelming, a bit like reminiscences: they don’t seem to be neat and ordered, they stumble and sometimes leap round. However if you happen to actually wish to perceive what made Paris what it’s right now, it is a good start line.
If you happen to’re eager on French historical past, be sure to subscribe to my free Substack, Gallia Incognita, for seems on the folks and occasions which have made up France.
Did you take pleasure in this text? I would love if you happen to shared it!
