Musée Carnavalet, the history of Paris in the Marais since 1880

The Musée Carnavalet opened to the public in 1880 at 23 rue de Sévigné, in the Marais: the City of Paris devoted a museum to its own history, in a mansion bought in 1866 on the advice of Baron Haussmann.

The house was built between 1548 and 1560 for Jacques de Ligneris, president of the Paris parlement. It takes its name from Kernevenoy, the Breton family who bought it in 1578, a name pronounced “Carnavalet”. François Mansart reworked it in 1660, and the Marquise de Sévigné lived here from 1677 to 1696.

In 1871 the first collections were lost in the fire at the Hôtel de Ville. The museum expanded in 1989 into the Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, linked by a gallery. Closed in 2016, it reopened in 2021 after five years of work, with a chronological route that now runs from prehistory to the present day.

Among the 3,800 works on display are Marcel Proust’s bedroom, memories of the French Revolution, paintings of Parisian life and period rooms from the 17th and 18th centuries. The museum has its own bookshop and restaurant, in the heart of the Marais.