The Carnavalet Museum
French history is so dense with drama and juicy personalities that it seems made for TV. My latest adventure in Paris, in fact, was prompted by TV: a colossal two-segment, six-hour, mind-filling rerun called The French Revolution. It made me want to immerse myself in those few amazing years when France rushed from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy to republican democracy to "mobocracy."
So Sunday morning I went to the Carnavalet, the former palace of Mme. de Sevigny and now the official museum of Paris history. The Carnavalet occupies most of a block of the Marais, the ancient quartier that houses great museums (including the Picasso), a thriving Jewish neighborhood, and umpteen boutiques and upmarket tourist shops. Sunday morning has free admission to all Paris museums, but still the Carnavalet was soothingly empty and quiet. Most of the other visitors were French, mostly older people with serious demeanors.
The museum retains the fragmented layout of a great private home that evolved over the centuries, so there is no linear chronological flow, nor are there flashy mega exhibits. It is a place for ruminating and gentle discoveries. Your thoughtful strollings may be rewarded with an unexpected intimacy. That's what I like most about it. Sunday, in a musty glass case that holds mementos of the final days of the royal family, I found a page from the Dauphin's homework book. He wrote it in prison, in the elegant hand of a well-born French boy. Next to it were the very chess pieces Louis XVI used to distract himself as he waited for the verdict that he must have known was inevitable.
In adjoining rooms were portraits of the great figures of the revolution - Desmoulins, Mirabeau, Marat, Danton, Robespierre, Saint Just - all looking remarkably like the actors who played them in the film I'd just seen on TV (including Peter Ustinov and Karl-Maria Brandauer, of all people). Also in that room were many crowd-scene paintings that served to document events or create historical mythology about the Revolutionary years, great canvases showing public festivals when the city - before paranoia and factionalism turned into the Terror - celebrated civic optimism and the new order. There are also, of course, grimmer paintings.
The show the beheadings and massacres of nobles, priests and eventually anyone at all accused of being a moderate or simply of being out of synch with the Committee on Public Safety. This part of the Carnavalet even displays a few scale models and fanciful elaborations of the guillotine. Some of these tiny models were originally sold as souvenirs at the beheadings. Other historical periods are less impressively documented in the Carnavalet, but still deserve a lingering visit: a great Medieval collection; detailed models of the city at different stages in its evolution; a quirky miscellany relating to Napoleon, including his parade armor and his death mask; Marcel Proust's own bed; and a fine display of 19th and early 20th century oils and photographs of Paris.
Unfortunately for those who don't read French, the excellent exhibit captions are in French only. Most of the guards are unfamiliar with English. However, there is a decent English-language guide available in the excellent little bookshop at the Museum. You can also read about it in detail in the Paris Blue Book (the guide book that most seriously covers art and architecture). One more point: the building itself is exquisite, with many rooms furnished and decorated as it was in Mme. de Sevigne's time. Plan to spend a half day there; reward yourself afterward with a meal at one of the neighborhood brasseries or, for a real change of pace, at Goldenberg's restaurant (interesting food, so-so service, better atmosphere).
Musee Carnavelet
23, rue de Sevigne
75003 Metro St. Paul (on line 1)
01 42 72 21 13
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 5:40 pm
35FF but free on Sunday if entering before 1 pm. Victor Kramer is an American consultant (and history buff) who's lived in France for over a decade. Copyright (c) 2000, Paris New Media, LLC
