Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Excerpted from Andrew Harper's Paris: A Personal Guide to the Best of the City, available for iPhone and iPad.

I never go for a walk in the Marais without a visit to this fascinating museum. Installed in two splendid private mansions joined by courtyard gardens — the 16th- and 17th-century Hôtel de Sévigné, the former home of Madame de Sévigné, and the 17th-century Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau — the Musée Carnavalet recounts the long, tumultuous history of Paris. Although Victor Hugo once said that the city’s depths could never be sounded, the Carnavalet makes a heroic attempt with a brilliantly eclectic collection that starts with a Neolithic river pirogue from 4600 B.C. and ends with 20th-century decorative arts. Over the course of 100 rooms, some 600,000 works include archaeological vestiges of prehistoric, Celtic and Roman eras; paintings, drawings, sculpture, furniture, decorative street signs and household objects; and reconstructed period interiors, among them author Marcel Proust’s cork-lined bedroom, a Belle Epoque jewelry shop and a 1925 art deco ballroom. The Carnavalet also has two annexes, the Archaeological Crypt beneath the parvis of Notre Dame Cathedral and the famous Catacombs, a vast ossuary in former underground quarries.

Musée Carnavalet (1 avenue du Colonel Henri Roi-Tanguy, 14th arrondissement). Open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; closed holidays. 23 rue de Sévigné (3e). Tel 01-44-59-58-58.  

Photos copyright OliverN5, Carles Tomás Martí, Ted Drake.