Paris has been home to collectors and collections for centuries , and they ’ve leave behind a landscape painting of humble museums . The source Edmund White once wrote that “ Paris has countless small and bizarre museums , little nook where someone ’s bid for immortality goes unnoticed . ” occupy every sorting of building , from former wine storage warehouse to 16th century cellars , the subjects of these low museums range from medical official document to fairground automatons . Emma Jacobs , author of thenew bookThe Little(r ) Museums of Paristakes us through some of the most unusual offerings .
1. Musée d’Histoire de la Médecine (Museum of The History of Medicine)
The display in thisgallery , trace the account of medicine from ancientness to the twentieth century , have plenty of grim handsaws , drills , and other formidable aesculapian pawn . Some item , by line , are wizardly , like the painted apothecary’s shop jars from Renaissance Italy . The museum also has an intricate wooden anatomic model that Napoleon Bonaparte order for Paris ’s aesculapian schoolhouse during his Italian campaign , as well as the tool used for his autopsy .
2. Musée de la Préfecture de Police (Police Prefecture Museum)
This avowedly grislymuseumtestifies to the long entreaty of true crime stories in France . Gustave Macé , a 19th - century police chief , assembled storage locker of slaying weapons and evidence in his position while writing a memoir he calledMy Criminal Museum . The aim have since embark this prescribed museum , take a floor of an existent police prefecture on the Left Bank . Besides famous assassin , thieves , and spy , the museum also introduces famous figures in the history of Paris law enforcement , like Macé and forensics pioneerAlphonse Bertillon .
3. Musée des Arts Forains (Museum of Fairground Arts)
Cavernous warehouse built as part of Paris ’s wholesale wine market have been made over as a picturesque fairground . Vines twine around mermaid and chandeliers in the courtyard , while at heart , carousels , colonnade game , and other finds are artfully arranged and recombine . anatomy rescued from a shuttered wax museum , including those of Louis Pasteur , painter Henri de Toulouse - Lautrec , and Thomas Edison , wear down colorful costume from a long - survive Paris theater , the Folies Bergère . Both shaver and adult visitant to themuseumcan play the vintage colonnade games and ride the merry-go-round .
4. Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Museum of Hunting And Nature)
Full of taxidermized trophy , the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature could very easily feel dated , like an old hunt hunting lodge , but instead it is a world of humor and notion . The pattern — with its feathered bronze banisters , and fauna at large like a George Fox curled up on an upholstered chair — make themuseumfeel both charming and contemporary , with modernistic works of art also integrated seamlessly into the décor .
5. Phono Museum
ThePhono Museumhas a collection of healthy recording engineering science dating back as far as the 1880 storage locker - size mechanically skillful euphony box from Switzerland , and traverse everything from 1930s phonograph to a record player from the studios of Radio France . Unlike many more traditional museum , the Phono Museum still regularly turn on vintage machine play records or even demode wax piston chamber recording for visitors .
6. Musée de la Magie and Musée des Automates (Museum of Magic And the Museum of Automatons)
A sojourn to theMusée de la Magiebegins with a performance of canonical deception by one of the resident necromancer , followed by a tour ( also in French ) of the collecting of charming objects displayed in atmospherical , sixteenth - century vaulted basement . Just adjacent , more than 100 mechanically skillful digit get to aliveness with the push of a button , waving wands , play instruments , or swinging on swings in the automaton collection . Most date to the eighteenth and 19th centuries , the golden age of the form , whenautomatonsproliferated in fairgrounds , departments shop , and even on level .
7. Musée Édith Piaf (Edith Piaf Museum)
In this pint - sizedmuseum , two room are packed tightly with armchairs and clothing form , and even more mementos on the wall : photographs , letters , paintings , and record cover . Even Édith Piaf ’s solicitation of cosmetic ceramic plate are arranged on claw . A teddy support precisely Piaf ’s diminutive summit ( 4 feet 8 inch ) occupy an armchair in the niche .
Piaf lived here for only a class in the former 1930s , when she was 18 and still singing for modification around Paris . Little Sparrow devotee Bernard Marchois , who meet Piaf as a stripling , has lived discreetly in half the apartment , open up the rooms devote to Piaf three afternoon a calendar week since the mid-1970s . reservation must be made in advance by earphone .
8. Maison d’Auguste Comte (Home of Auguste Comte)
Comte , a 19th - century French philosopher , has only become more obscure in late decades . Hisapartmenthas undergone a lifelike aging — rouge peeling , screech floor — that enhances the impression of walking around a hushed shrine to a draw a blank hero . This seems appropriate for a valet who create an genuine , though little - have a go at it , religion . Called “ positivism , ” or the “ Religion of Humanity , ” this impression system revolved around Comte ’s optimism for organizing a good society found on skill and cause . Comte ’s adherent save his apartment and cautiously restore the furnishings in the 1960s based on a detailed inventory . Scientific instruments sit on mantelpieces and in cabinets . His utensils even have their own glass case in the kitchen .
9. Musée des Plans-Reliefs (Museum of Relief-Maps)
Louis XIV ( 1638 - 1715 ) had 144 maps made to design his military political campaign , which aimed to procure France ’s borders against its rivals , the Habsburgs and Protestants . This 3D atlas gave the king and his generals aerial views of France that may seem banal in the era of Google Earth , but that no one in the seventeenth one C would ever have seen . During these wars , Town traded hands between the bang-up powers , and so the same model could be used to design munition against a siege and later to reconquer the same terrain . The king kept the models under lock and paint in the Louvre ’s Grand Gallery , admit only quality visitor to see the sensitive stuff . His relievo maps and those establish by future Gallic rulers now reside an upper corner of theMusée de l’Arméein Les Invalides .
Adapted with permit fromTHE LITTLE(R ) museum OF PARIS © 2019 by Emma Jacobs , Running Press
