Musée de Cluny - Musée national du Moyen Âge

One of the world’s greatest medieval collections can be found here at the National Museum of the Middle Ages, set on the corner of the Boulevards Saint-Michel and Saint-Germain, right in the centre of the Latin Quarter (named thus because of the quarter’s schools and universities where in the Middle Ages teaching was conducted in Latin). The Cluny Museum has reopened its doors after several years of work.

You can admire masterpieces of Western medieval art, including the legendary “The Lady with the Unicorn,” a stunning series of six 15th-century tapestries.

The tapestries are housed within an extraordinary site that combines a 13th-century townhouse once belonging to the abbots of Cluny, a sumptuous chapel with magnificent stained glass windows and vaults, as well as Gallo-Roman thermal baths built in the 1st century, and used during the Middle Ages. The construction of the frigidarium (cold room) will also give you good a sense of Roman technical prowess. In addition, the chapel vaults soaring up to over 14 metres are very well preserved. Take advantage of a guided tour (upon reservation) to explore the underground galleries and technical control areas where the bathhouse employees worked.

Cluny, a museum of art and history: 24,000 works and over 1,000 years of artistic expression

This remarkable museum possesses 24,000 pieces spanning more than 1,000 years of artistic creation, from Antiquity to the 15th century. The collection comprises archaeological treasures, everyday objects and religious artwork. Thematic tours around the world of chivalry and courtly love, as well as narrated tours for the delight of your children are available. The museum’s priceless collections combined with its exceptional setting will take you on a journey through time.

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… the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine which presents in its galerie des moulages, a unique collection imagined in the 19th century by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, of three hundred and fifty plaster casts (sometimes more than 10 metres high!) and sixty architectural models. Masterpieces of the Middle Ages such as the churches of Moissac, Conques or Vézelay, the cathedrals of Paris, Reims or Strasbourg but also the Arc de triomphe of the Étoile in Paris… The gallery of casts traces more than six centuries of architecture and the evolution of monumental sculpted decoration. Impressive!