You know we love Paris, so you won’t be surprised to learn that this is not our first visit to the Carnavalet Museum, dedicated to the history of the city. In fact, we wrote an article on the blog about our visit to the museum back in 2012!

Time has flown by since then and a lot has changed.

There’s been major renovation over a four-year period (during some of which the museum was completely closed). The interior has been spruced up, there a new route through the sixty rooms (yes, the place is huge), a new entrance area, new exhibition rooms in the basement, a new café… The exterior has also been worked on – the facade has been cleaned, the courtyards renovated, some wooden parquet flooring has been replaced, and all of the 3,800 works on show have been restored.

If you’ve visited before, you’ll definitely recognise some rooms which have remained quite similar, but others are completely new or radically remodelled. The (multilingual) presentation is also much more modern, with interactive screens at certain points – very 21st century, whereas previously the place was definitely starting to show its age.

The visit still starts with a presentation of old Paris shop signs, but the next few rooms now show and explain the building and museum through the ages, and instead of continuing the visit upstairs you now go down into the cellar which has some rooms dedicated to the very early history of the city, the archeological digs that have revealed much about its growth, and how it developed through the Middle Ages.

This first part of the museum presentation runs up to the beginning of the 16th century, and you’ll no doubt be fascinated not only by the exhibits but also the impressive rooms themselves.

It would would be fastidious to list every one of the sixty-plus rooms (you might like to check out the museum catalogue if you want all the details), but this page (in French) gives some information about the general layout of the museum.

Unsurprisingly, much of the presentation is arranged chronologically, but sometimes also by theme. You’l learn all about the styles of art and design throughout the ages, the storming of the Bastille, the fall of Louis XVI, how Paris became the most fertile city in the world both intellectually and artistically, how the layout of the city was radically changed by Haussmann, why the areas of Montparnasse and Montmartre became so important, the Belle Époque, Art Nouveau, Paris in the 20th century and a new room looking at Paris from 1977 to the present day.

It’s a rich, fascinating presentation… but also lengthy, so pace yourselves!

The museum is unique in that presents all style (of art, interior design, architecture…) and because it’s run by the Paris council rather than the state, the permanent collection is free!

Only the temporary exhibitions have paid entry (13€ / 11€ for example for the Paris is pataphysical exhibition devised by internationally-famous French designer Philippe Starck, which runs until 27th August 2023.

French-speakers can peruse the press pack here for more details, and the catalogue is available for 29€ here at your local amazon.

And don’t forget that the museum’s gardens are also worth a look, with their carefully-sculpted plants and classic French layout…

We absolutely adore the Carnavalet Museum, and we think you will too, especially in its new 2.0 version. Everyone visiting Paris should go visit – you won’t regret it!

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The Carnavalet Museum (here) is open every day except Mondays from 10am-6pm

Closed 1st January, 1st May and 25th December

Entrance free, except for the temporary exhibitions

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To check out the full gallery (165 photos!) of our visit to the Carnavalet Museum, click here or, in the image below, click the arrow ‘>‘ on the right-hand side of the image.