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Archives Nationales
France's National Archives are housed in the Soubise wing of the Hôtel de Rohan-Soubise. Here you'll find antique furniture and 18th-century paintings but primarily documents - everything from medieval incunabula and letters written by Joan of Arc to the wills of Louis XIV and Napoleon. The ceiling and walls of the interior are extravagantly painted and gilded in the rococo style.
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Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Just across the Seine from Bercy are the four glass towers of the controversial two billion euro National Library of France conceived by the late President François Mitterrand as a 'wonder of the modern world' and opened in 1998. The library contains around 12 million tomes stored on some 420km (261mi) of shelves and can accommodate 2000 readers and 2000 researchers.
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Bois de Boulogne
The 845-hectare Bois De Boulogne (Boulogne Wood) on the western edge of Paris owes its informal layout to Baron Haussmann, who was inspired by Hyde Park in London. The wood's enclosed Parc de Bagatelle in the northwestern corner, is renowned for its beautiful gardens surrounding the 1775-built Château de Bagatelle. There are areas dedicated to irises (which bloom in May), roses (June to October) and water lilies (August).
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Bourse de Commerce
At one time the city's grain market, the circular Trade Exchange was capped with a copper dome in 1811. The murals running along internal walls bellow the galleries show French trade and industry through the ages. They were painted in 1889 and restored in 1998.
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Cabinet des Médailles et Monnaies
Housed in the original home of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France before it moved to its high-tech headquarters in the 13e arrondissement more than a decade ago is this enormous hoard of coins, medals and tokens numbering more than 500,000.
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Catacombes de Paris
In 1785, Paris decided to solve the problem of its overflowing cemeteries by exhuming the bones of the buried and relocating them to the tunnels of several disused quarries, leading to the creation of the Catacombes. Visitors to this disturbing 'attraction' will find themselves 20m (65ft) underground, working their way along corridors stacked with bones.
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Centre Pompidou
The Pompidou Centre, also known simply as Beaubourg, is all about modern and contemporary 20th-century art. Thanks in part to its vigorous schedule of temporary exhibitions, it's the most visited cultural site in Paris. Two floors are dedicated to some of the 40000-plus works of the Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne, the country's collection of 20th-century art.
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Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie
High-tech exhibits abound at the enormous City of Science and Industry, situated in the Parc de la Villette. Some attractions are free, while others, such as the iconic silver sphere Géode, screening 180-degree films, and the Cité des Enfants ('Children's City'; lots of robots) incur fees. Orient yourself with a free Keys to the Cité map from the main entrance.
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Dalí Espace
Catalan surrealist Dalí lived in Montmartre (at one point becoming its 'Emperor' at the invitation of self-titled Empress Lucie Valore, though their affair was short-lived). Dalí's illustrations, sculptures, engravings and furniture, such as his 'lips' sofa, are displayed against the dramatic black-painted walls of this museum. It also mounts temporary exhibitions such as 'Dalí and Fashion'.
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Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain
Designed by architect de jour Jean Nouvel, this stunning space is worth checking out for the building alone, but it also hosts temporary exhibits spanning all facets of contemporary art from the 1980s on, including paintings, photography, video and fashion.
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Fondation Dubuffet
Situated in a lovely 19th-century hôtel particulier accessible at the end of a courtyard, the foundation houses and administers the collection of Jean Dubuffet (1901-85), chief of the Art Brut school, a term he himself coined to describe all works of artistic expression not officially recognised. Much of his work is incredibly modern and expressive.
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Galerie-Musée Baccarat
That's gratitude for you… For decades the glittering Baccarat Gallery-Museum displayed its 1000 stunning pieces of crystal, many of them custom-made for princes and dictators of desperately poor excolonies, at the CIAT (Centre International des Arts de la Table) building, a fine example of Napoleon III-era industrial architecture in the gritty but gracious 10e arrondissement. And then the Noailles stately home became available in the uppity 16e, interior designer Philippe Starck was called in and the museum was at home precisely where you'd expect it to be. Shame… Rue de Paradis (Paradise St) will never be the same. There is an excellent restaurant called the Crystal Room attached now, though.
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Hôtel de Sully
Housed in a 17th-century mansion, the Jeu de Palme - Site Sully is an annexe of the national photography centre, and focuses on monograph and thematic photography exhibitions. In the same building, framed by two Renaissance courtyards, is the headquarters of the Monuments Nationaux (www.monum.fr), which has reams of info about France's national monuments.
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Hôtel des Invalides
The Hôtel des Invalides was built in the 1670s to provide housing for 4000 invalides (disabled veterans). On July 14, 1789, the Paris mob forced its way into the building and, after fierce fighting, seized 28000 rifles before heading on to the Bastille prison.
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Institut de France
The French Institute, created in 1795, brought together five of France's academies of arts and sciences. The most famous of these is the Académie Française (French Academy), founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu. Its 40 members, known as the Immortels (Immortals), have the Herculean (some say impossible) task of safeguarding the purity of the French language.
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Institut du Monde Arabe
The Institute of the Arab World was established to promote cultural relations between the Islamic and Western worlds. The museum, spread over three floors, displays 9th- to 19th-century art and artisanship from around the Islamic world, as well as instruments from astronomy and other fields of scientific endeavour in which Arab technology once led the world.
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Jeu de Paume
The Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume is housed in an erstwhile jeu de paume (royal tennis court), built in 1861 during the reign of Napoleon III in a corner of the Jardin des Tuileries. Once home to much of France's national collection of impressionist art (now housed in the Musée d'Orsay), the gallery now stages innovative exhibitions of contemporary art.
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La Défense Espace Histoire
La Défense History Space below the Espace Info-Défense traces the development of La Défense via drawings, architectural plans and enough scale models to make you feel like Gulliver.
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Maison de Victor Hugo
One of the symmetrical houses on the place des Vosges, the former home of Victor Hugo is where he wrote much of Les Misérables . The museum offers an evocative insight to the writer's life, featuring drawings, portraits, and furnishings preserved just as they were when he resided here.
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Maison Européenne de la Photographie
The European House of Photography, housed in the rather overwrought 18th-century Hôtel Hénault de Cantorbe, has cutting-edge temporary exhibits (usually retrospectives on single photographers) and a huge permanent collection on the history of photography and its French connections. There are frequent screenings of short films and documentaries on weekends.
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Mémorial de la Shoah
Established in 1956, the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr has metamorphosed into the Memorial of the Holocaust and documentation centre after a lengthy renovation. The permanent collection and temporary exhibits relate to the Holocaust and the German occupation of parts of France and Paris during WWII; the film clips of contemporary footage and interviews are heart-rending and the displays instructive and easy to follow.
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Musée Atelier Zadkine
This museum is devoted to the life and work of Russian Cubist sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967), who arrived in Paris in 1908, and lived and worked in this cottage in a lovely courtyard opposite the Jardin du Luxembourg for almost 40 years. Though he is scarcely known outside France, Zadkine produced an enormous catalogue of work in wood, clay, stone and bronze.
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Musée Bourdelle
The Bourdelle Museum, due north of Gare Montparnasse, contains monumental bronzes in the very house and workshop where the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929), a pupil of Rodin, lived and worked. The three sculpture gardens, one of which faces rue Antoine Bourdelle, are particularly lovely and impart a flavour of the Montparnasse of the belle époque and post-WWI periods.
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Musée Carnavalet
The artefacts on display in this important museum, subtitled Musée de l'Histoire de Paris (Paris History Museum), chart the history of Paris from the Gallo-Roman period to the 20th century. Some of the nation's most important documents, paintings and other relics from the French Revolution are here.
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Musée Cernuschi
The Cernuschi Museum, recently renovated and its exhibition space redefined and enlarged, houses a collection of ancient Chinese art (funerary statues, bronzes, ceramics) and some works from Japan assembled during an 1871-73 world tour by the banker and philanthropist Henri Cernuschi (1821-96), who settled here from Milan before the unification of Italy.
