Carnavalet Museum

Pros: Small fascinating and historic Museum
Cons: I'm not there now

One of my all time favorite small Museums, is located in the area of Paris called the Marais...The Grand Carnavalet, now referred to as the Musee Carnavalet. This museum is housed in two old splendid Mansions with the displays in ...

Pros: Spectacular collections, off the beaten track.
Cons: Too much to see in one visit.

We went to the Musee Carnavalet for one reason alone, to see the room designed by Alphonse Mucha for the Fouquet jewelry store, but we were swept away by much more. It IS worth a visit for the Mucha room alone, but you will discover, in this hidden jewel box on 23, rue de Sévigneé, in the 3rd Arrondissement (Metro, Saint-Paul), generations of Parisian art, artifacts and history preserved and presented in a beautiful setting. We particularly enjoyed the gallery of trade signs--real French folk art-- and the paintings of Montmartre, for sentimental reasons, as that is where we were staying. As for the Mucha room, it was more splendid than we had imagined it from the pictures. It felt like a true privilege to be able to stand in its center. WOW!