Museums in Paris

Discover 20 unusual museums in Paris.

Museum entrance

Mundolingua

A museum dedicated to linguistics, from how babies learn to talk to endangered and extinct languages.

Interior of the house

Maison de Victor Hugo

A museum dedicated to one of Paris’s most famous residents, tucked into a corner of one of the city’s most famous squares.

Van Gogh, "Starry Night."

L'Atelier des Lumières (Workshop of Light)

An immersive projection art installation uses sound, scale, and light to take visitors inside classic works of art.

Exterior of the museum.

Musée du quai Branly (Quai Branly Museum)

This Parisian gem is one of the most incredible ethnographic museums in the world.

Le Chat Noir.

Le Chat Noir Collection

Original cabaret handbills, posters, and feline artwork are a purrfect highlight of the Museum of Montmartre.

The entrance to Piaf's former home and current museum.

Musée Edith Piaf

This museum in a Paris apartment gives a unique look at the iconic French singer's life.

Exterior of Centre Pompidou

Centre Pompidou

An "inside out" building in the historical center of Paris, featuring Europe’s largest modern art museum.

Tobacco leaves drying

Le Musée du Fumeur

Dedicated to the history and culture of smoking, this small museum now includes a vape lounge.

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Musée Marmottan Monet

Former hunting lodge of a duke who was an avid collector of impressionist works.

The murder scene as rendered in 2001

Jean-Paul Marat's Bathtub at Musée Grévin

A magical, macabre wax museum, beloved by locals, uses real artifacts to depict an assassination from the French Revolution.

Cafe outside the museum

Musée de la Vie Romantique

Down a cobblestone alleyway is a museum dedicated to Romanticism, with a secret garden.

Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy - mammoth and Lascaux paintings

Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy

This museum houses an imposing skeleton army comprised of creatures great and small.

A pack of Radium-laced cigarettes at the Musée Curie.

Musée Curie

The history of radiation is on safe display at the foot of a radiation science laboratory.

Clément Ader's Avion III

Musée des Arts et Métiers

France's national museum of scientific and industrial instruments.

Diving suit by the Carmagnolle brothers from 1882

Musée National de la Marine

Museum on French naval history, with magnificent figureheads, a historic diving suit, and a boat used by Napoleon.

Musée des Arts Forains

Musée des Arts Forains

A museum of carnival attractions where you are invited to ride the rides.