Free Museums in France

The City of Paris Fine Art Museum is housed in the Petit Palais in Paris, which was built for the 1900 World's Fair (the 1900 Exposition Universelle ("universal exhibition")) by the architect Charles Girault. The museum holds and exhibits a large collection of ancient and modern art, including paint

The Musée Carnavalet is the museum in Paris for the history of the city with a very wide collection. The museum consists of the Hôtel de Carnavalet and the Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, together accounting for around a hundred rooms. The Hôtel Carnavalet was built in 1548 by Count Jacques des

Le Jardin des Plantes is a botanical garden in Paris that also houses a zoo, the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes. The garden is located on the left bank of the Seine, and has been part of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle since 1793. The site covers around 28 hectares and next to the zoo and

The Grande Galerie de l'Évolution (Great Gallery of Evolution) is part of the French Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, located in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. This museum focuses on the evolution of the animal and plant world. The first floor focuses on marine animal species. Land life is t

Visit the Maison de Victor Hugo where the famous writer who is one of the most famous representatives of Romanticism spent 16 years of his life, and enjoy its unique atmosphere. Each room in the apartment of Victor Hugo describes a certain period of his life in detail - before, during and after exil

The Mémorial de la Shoah (Center de documentation juive contemporaine, CDJC) is the central memorial to the Holocaust in France, located in Paris. Focus is the persecution of the Jews in occupied France and under the Vichy regime from 1940-1944. The Mémorial de la Shoah is also a museum where visito

Musée National des Arts Asiatiques - Musée Guimet is a French museum of Asian art in Paris. Although the museum now covers almost all of East Asia, focus is on archaeological pieces and classical oriental art, with few to no contemporary or ethnological pieces. There is however an extensive textile

Musée Bourdelle is a museum in Paris that is located in the former residence and studio of the French sculptor Émile-Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929). The museum exhibits an important art collection of his work. It was founded in 1949. Like Auguste Rodin, Antoine Bourdelle wanted to leave a museum at t

The Musée de la vie romantique museum is one of the three literary museums in Paris together with Maison de Balzac and Maison de Victor Hugo. It displays works of romantic authors - e.g. sculptures by Bartholdi, paintings by Ary Scheffer and also many items connected to the persona of George Sand.

The Musée Cognacq-Jay is an art museum in Paris that was founded by Marie-Louise Jaÿ (1838-1925) and her husband Ernest Cognacq (1839-1928). The founders and owners of the La Samaritaine department store built a large collection of valuable furniture and works of art from between 1900 and 1925. The

The Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes is located in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. It is a zoo that is part of the organization of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. The Ménagerie was opened in 1794, making it the oldest in the world after Tiergarten Schönbrunn, which is located in Vienna. Ma

The Zadkine Museum (Musée Zadkine) is a small museum in Paris with works by Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967), a Russian-born artist who lived in France. The museum is located in the house and studio where he lived and worked from 1928 until his death. There are around 400 sculptures, gouaches, works on pap

Musée du Général Leclerc de Hauteclocque et de la Libération de Paris - Musée Jean Moulin is a museum that is located on the roof garden of Gare Montparnasse in Paris. Exhibits in the museum include underground newspapers, propaganda posters of the Vichy regime, uniforms of the Marshal of Africa and

Musée des Arts Asiatiques de Nice is the Asian Arts Museum of Nice in Parc Phœnix, which houses collections of Asian arts. It was inaugurated in 1981 and was designed by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. Its collections are from private and public collections, reflecting the important civilizations in

The Zoo de Lyon (Zoo of the Park of the Golden Head), formerly known as Zoological Garden of Lyon, is a French municipal zoological park in Lyon. The zoo was founded in 1858 by Claude-Marius Vaïsse and is home to a little more than 300 animals representing 66 species.

Musée d'Histoire de Lyon is a history museum in Lyon that is housed in Hotel Gadagne. The museum houses the historic collections of the city and presents it chronologically, illustrating the cultural history of Lyon since the Middle Ages until the nineteenth century, with more than 80,000 objects in

The Museum of the Legion of Honor (Musée national de la Légion d'honneur et des ordres de chevalerie) is a museum of orders of merit and orders of chivalry, housed in the Hôtel de Salm, built in 1782 by architect Pierre Rousseau for Frederick III, Prince of Salm-Kyrburg, in Paris. The collection of

Atelier Brancusi is a French glyptotheque that is related to the Georges Pompidou National Center for Art and Culture in Paris. Located on Georges Pompidou Square, it is designed to reproduce the studio of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi. It is a national museum of modern art in Paris.

The Musée de la Préfecture de Police is a museum that is housed in the Hôtel de police in Paris that is dedicated to police history. The collection of this police museum in Paris contains photographs, letters, memorabilia, and drawings that illustrate major events in the history of France, famous cr

The Musée Curie in Paris is a historical museum dedicated to radiological research. The museum is housed in the former laboratory of Marie Curie (a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity). The laboratory was built 1911-1914 and Marie Cu

The American socialite, fashion icon and philanthropist Countess Mona von Bismarck donated her Parisian townhouse and the majority of her estate to found the Mona Bismarck Foundation. The Mona Bismarck American Center in Paris aims to engage visitors in a dialogue with the depth and diversity of the

The Pavillon de l'Arsenal is a museum in Paris that is dedicated to architecture and urban planning and architecture in Paris and its surroundings. The museum building was built in 1878-1879 for wood merchant Laurent-Louis Borniche. The permanent exhibition in the Pavillon de l'Arsenal presents Pari

La Gaîté Lyrique is a digital arts and modern music centre located on the site of the former Théâtre de la Gaîté in Paris. It includes the following performance venues: Large Hall (Grande Salle), the Small Hall (Petite Salle), and the Auditorium. Furthermore it includes a resource centre which funct

La maison de la culture du Japon à Paris (Japanese Culture House of Paris) is managed by the Japan Foundation and aims to spread Japanese culture. The Japanese Culture House of Paris hosts exhibitions, shows, film screenings, lectures, cooking demonstrations as well as tea ceremonies and courses on

Musée Franciscain (the Franciscan Museum) is a museum in Nice in France that is devoted to the life of the Franciscans in Nice from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The museum illustrates the spiritual and social message of Saint Francis of Assisi through paintings, sculptures, engravings

The History of Medicine Museum (Musée de l'Histoire de la Médecine) in Toulouse is housed in the Jean-de-Rudelle space, at Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Jacques, a former hospital listed by UNESCO. The museum holds a collection of objects that originate from the second half of the 19th century to the present day

The Paris Observatory (Observatoire de Paris or Observatoire de Paris-Meudon) is the most important observatory in France and one of the largest astronomy centers in the world. The historic main building is sitauted on the left bank of the Seine in the center of Paris. The observatory was establishe

Terra Amata is an archeological site on the slopes of Mount Boron in Nice, in France. On the site, which used to be a prehistoric beach, archeaologists discovered tools of the Lower Paleolithic period (around 400,000 BCE) and traces of some of Europe's earliest domestication of fire. The site now li

The Musée du Parfum in Paris (The Perfume Museum) is housed in a Napoleon III style mansion. It was built in 1860 by the architect Lesoufaché, a pupil of Garnier, famous for having built the opera of the same name located in front of the museum. Painted ceilings, parquet floors, romantic stuccoes, f

The Pavillon de l'eau is a museum in paris that is devoted to water with a permanent exhibition about the water supply of Paris and its history from Roman aqueducts to the present. Paris has experienced four periods of production and distribution of water: The Roman age, the Middle Ages, the Modern

Musée de la Marine et de l’Economie is a small museum in Marseille, housed in the building of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Marseille. The museum holds a collection of paintings and documents that illustrate the time when Marseille was the main port of France.

Villa Arson is a national center for contemporary art in Nice in France that contains an art museum, an elite school, a media library and a research institution for contemporary art. The complete area of 20,000 m² includes exhibition space, workshops, student accommodation and gardens.

The Musée Bible et Terre Sainte in Paris (Bible and Holy Land Museum), is dedicated to the history of Palestine. The museum houses a collection that contains more than 500 exhibits, illustrating everyday life in Palestine from 5000 BCE to 600 CE.

The Perfume museum Paris Fragonard is a museum in Paris that is dedicated to perfume and shows the manufacturing process from raw materials to harvesting, extraction, distillation, formulation, industrialization and bottling together with the creative process and work of the master “noses”. Furtherm

Musée Départemental de la Résistance et de la Déportation in Toulouse exhibits items such as photos and clothing, which remind visitors of the deportations by Nazis.

The Mémorial de la Marseillaise celebrates France's revolutionary national anthem called 'the Marseillaise'. It is housed in a house built in 1681, this old house is a former indoor ball court and a Turkish bath house until the mid 1970s. The exhibits of the museum are mostly related to the history

The Édith Piaf Museum is a private museum in Paris that is dedicated to Edith Piaf, who was a French singer, songwriter, cabaret performer and film actress and one of the country's most widely known international stars. The museum exhibits memorabilia of the artist: photographs, letters, scores, pos

The Théâtre-Musée des Capucines (Théâtre musée des Capucines-Fragonard) is a museum in Paris that is dedicated to perfume. The museum was created in 1993 by the Fragonard perfume company in a former theater called the Théâtre des Capucines that dates back to 1889. It exhibits 19th-century copper dis

Galerie des Ponchettes is a gallery that is attached to the MAMAC that is dedicated to contemporary art. The MAMAC conducts an exhibition program of several sections of its collections at the gallery of Ponchettes.

The Galerie de la Marine is a gallery in nice that is dedicated to young emerging artists on the national and international scene of contemporary art. Galerie de la Marine and Villa Arson (also in Nice) are partners for the promotion of young artists graduated from the National School of Art in Nice