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Musée du Parfum
The Perfume Museum run by the perfumerie Fragonard is a fragrant collection opposite the Palais Garnier tracing the history of scent and perfume-making from ancient Egypt (those mummies wouldn't have smelled very nice undoused) to today's designer brands.
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Musée du Quai Branly
Raked ramps lead through this urban-industrial building to darkened, mesh-encased rooms, which form a sharp contrast to the traditional indigenous art and artefacts from Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Americas displayed here, and the 'music box' screening indigenous musical celebrations. The Branly's on-site café and elevated restaurant, Les Ombres, both have ringside Eiffel Tower views.
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Musée du Stylo et de L'écriture
The Museum of the Pen and of Penmanship has the most important collection of writing utensils in the world, with pens dating back to the early 18th century, as well as paper and calligraphy. It can be visited on other days if you phone and book in advance.
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Musée du Vin
The not-so-comprehensive Wine Museum, headquarters of the prestigious International Federation of Wine Brotherhoods, introduces visitors to the fine art of viticulture with mock-ups and displays of tools. Admission includes a glass of wine at the end of the visit. Lunch at the attached restaurant is a good way to try a couple more varietals.
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Musée Édith Piaf
You need to reserve ahead but it's worth it to visit this small museum cluttered with memorabilia, recordings and video footage of legendary Parisian chanteuse Édith ' Non, je ne regrette rien ' Piaf. Born Édith Gassion, the diminutive (142cm) singer was nicknamed la Môme Piaf (the Little Sparrow) by nightclub-owner Louis Leplée, who launched her immortal career.
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Musée Galliera de la Mode de la Ville de Paris
The Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, housed in the 19th-century Palais Galliera, warehouses some 100000 outfits and accessories from the 18th century to the present day and exhibits them - and items borrowed from abroad - in tremendously successful temporary exhibitions. The sumptuous Italianate building and gardens are worth a visit in themselves.
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Musée Grévin
This large waxworks museum inside the passage Jouffroy boasts 300 wax figures that largely look more like caricatures than characters, but where else do you get to see Marilyn Monroe, Charles de Gaulle and Spiderman face-to-face or the real death masks of French Revolutionary leaders? The admission fee is positively outrageous and just keeps a-growin'.
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Musée Guimet des Arts Asiatiques
The Guimet Museum of Asiatic Arts is France's foremost repository for Asian art and has sculptures, paintings, objets d'art and religious articles from Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Tibet, Cambodia, China, Japan and Korea. Besides its impressive permanent collection, the Museum stages temporary exhibitions and runs educational courses for the public.
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Musée Jacquemart-André
This museum, founded by collector Édouard André and his portraitist wife Nélie Jacquemart, is housed in an opulent mid-19th-century residence. It contains original furniture, tapestries and enamels but is most noted for its paintings by Rembrandt and Van Dyck and Italian Renaissance works by Bernini, Botticelli, Tintoretto, Titian, Uccello and more.
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Musée Maillol-Fondation Diana Vierny
This splendid small museum focuses on the work of the sculptor Aristide Maillol (1861-1944) and also includes works by Matisse, Gauguin, Kandinsky, Cézanne and Picasso from the private collection of Dina Vierny (born 1915), who was Maillol's principal model for 10 years from the age of 15. The museum is located in the stunning 18th-century Hôtel Bouchardon.
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Musée Marmottan-Monet
The Marmottan-Monet Museum, which is two blocks east of the Bois de Boulogne and between Porte de la Muette and Porte de Passy, has the world's largest collection of works by the impressionist painter Claude Monet (1840-1926) - some 100 chefs d'œuvre - as well as paintings by Gauguin, Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir, Degas, Manet and Berthe Morisot.
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Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle
France's national museum of natural history incorporates three separate centres adjoining the Jardin des Plantes: the Galerie de Minéralogie et de Gélogie, dealing with minerals and geology; the Galerie d'Anatomie Comparée et de Paléontologie, focussing on anatomy and fossils; and the most interesting, the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution, with topical exhibits about humanity's effect on the ecosystem and global warming.
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Musée National du Moyen Age
The National Museum of the Middle Ages (sometimes called the Musée de Cluny, or just Cluny), is fittingly housed in both the remains of Gallo-Roman baths (c AD 200), and the 15th-century Hôtel de Cluny, Paris' finest civil medieval building. The highlight is the series of 15th-century tapestries, The Lady with the Unicorn . Its foliage inspired the forest planted outside.
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Musée National Eugène Delacroix
The father of French Romanticism lived at this intimate courtyard studio until his death in 1863. Although his most famous works are at the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay , as well as St-Sulpice, the museum's collection of oils, watercolours, pastels and drawings, and, especially, its location off a magnolia-shaded square, make it a delight.
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Musée National Gustave Moreau
The National Gustave Moreau Museum, about 500m southwest of place Pigalle, is dedicated to the eponymous symbolist painter's work. Housed in what was once Moreau's studio, the two-storey museum is crammed with 4800 of his paintings, drawings and sketches. Some of Moreau's paintings are fantastic - in both senses of the word.
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Musée Nissim de Camondo
The Nissim de Camondo Museum, housed in a sumptuous mansion modelled on the Petit Trianon at Versailles , displays 18th-century furniture, wood panelling, tapestries, porcelain and other objets d'art collected by Count Moïse de Camondo, a Jewish banker who settled in Paris from Constantinople in the late 19th century.
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Musée Pasteur
Housed in the apartment where the famous chemist and bacteriologist spent the last seven years of his life (1888-95), a tour of this museum takes you through Pasteur's private rooms, a hall with such odds and ends as gifts presented to him by heads of state and drawings he did as a young man.
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Musée Picasso
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was the outstanding genius of 20th-century art, and his capacity for work was superhuman: he painted, drew and otherwise created from his early youth until his death at the age of 91. Much of his prolific and prodigious legacy can be found in the wonderful Musée Picasso.
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Musée Rodin
When he died, the renowned sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1907) left his magnificent 18th-century residence and a huge body of work to the state in lieu of rent. One of the most tranquil spots in the city, the Musée Rodin is also many visitors' favourite Paris museum.
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Palais de Chaillot & Jardins du Trocadéro
The two curved, colonnaded wings of the Palais de Chaillot, built for the 1937 World Exhibition held in Paris, and the terrace in between them afford an exceptional panorama of the Jardins du Trocadéro, the Seine and the Eiffel Tower.
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Palais de la Découverte
The Palace of Discovery is a fascinating science museum with interactive exhibits on astronomy, biology, medicine, chemistry, maths, computer science, physics and earth sciences. Inaugurated during the 1937 Exposition Universelle, it was the world's first interactive museum.
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Palais de Tokyo
The Tokyo Palace, in a 1937 World Exhibition building next to the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, opened in 2002 as a 'Site de Création Contemporain' (site for contemporary arts). An event-driven rather than static museum, it has no permanent collection, and doesn't do single artist/theme exhibitions, but showcases ephemeral artwork and installations.
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Palais Garnier
This renowned opera house was designed in 1860 by Charles Garnier to showcase the splendour of Napoleon III's France. Unfortunately, by the time it was completed 15 years later, the Second Empire was a distant memory and Napoleon III was six feet under. Still it is one of the most impressive monuments erected in Paris during the 19th century and today stages operas, ballets and classical-music concerts.
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Parc de Bercy
This park, which links the Palais Omnisports with Bercy Village, is a particularly attractive 14-hectare public garden. On an island in the centre of one of its large ponds is the Maison du Lac du Parc de Bercy with temporary exhibitions. The Maison du Jardinage in the centre of the park takes a close look at gardening and the environment.
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Parc de la Villette
Opened in 1993, this 35-hectare park in the city's far northeastern corner stretches from the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie southwards to the Citeé de la Musique. It is the largest open green space in central Paris and has been called 'the prototype of the urban park of the 21st century'.
