Ninety seconds on Musée Carnavalet
If you have one afternoon for the story of Paris, the city's own history museum takes you from Roman Lutetia to Proust's bedroom. Come above all for the Revolution rooms.
The Revolution rooms are what the museum is famous for: no collection anywhere holds more art and objects from the Revolution's ten years. Look for the keys, handcuffs and fragments of stone from the Bastille, and a carved model of the fortress. One case holds a bust of Marat, Charlotte Corday's bonnet and the door handles from his bathroom.
Close by are a slipper of Marie Antoinette, a model of the guillotine and a reconstruction of a room in the Temple prison. The king and his family were held in the Temple, and the rebuilt room shows where they lived.
Two rooms were rebuilt here whole. The jewellery shop is a complete Art Nouveau interior designed by Alphonse Mucha for the Fouquet jewellers. Marcel Proust's cork-lined bedroom is reconstructed with a lock of his hair, cut on his deathbed, framed beside Man Ray's deathbed portrait of him.
If you have time for the start, see the Neolithic finds in the second room of the prehistory section, then Lutetia, the Roman town under Paris, in the third. Out in the central courtyard stands a bronze of Louis XIV, a rare survivor from before the Revolution.
Coming in from rue Madame de Sévigné, you enter two joined mansions: the Hôtel Carnavalet and its neighbour, the Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau. Leave coats and bags in the self-service cloakroom behind the welcome counter. Staff at reception can give advice on what to see if you ask.
The rooms run in date order, so the first galleries cover prehistory and Roman Paris, not the Revolution. Short on time, pick one period and head straight for it. Temporary exhibitions are ticketed separately, and only a booking made in advance guarantees you a place.
Download the museum's own app from the App Store or Google Play before you arrive, and use it to plan your route through the two mansions. Its children's routes carry audio written for younger listeners. Gallery texts are in English as well as French.
Photograph what you like for your own use, but leave the flash off and the tripod at home.
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