A good alternative to the more well-known museums in Paris is the Musée Carnavalet (23 rue Sévigné, 75003 Paris; phone 01 44 59 58 58).
Paris’ history is housed behind the walls of the two Renaissance-era mansions that make up this museum, and visitors are offered a good overview, from Louis XIV to the Napoleonic era and the Belle Époque. It’s all free, and it’s not crowded like the Louvre.
My favorites in this museum were two delightful, turn-of-the-20th-century Parisian rooms illustrating the curvy, decorative Art Nouveau style. Peacocks peered through stained glass as nubile nymphs sat atop fountains.
My wife, Anne, and I included this museum as part of our Marais district walk, which took us through one of Paris’ most characteristic quarters. This area contains, according to Rick Steves’ excellent “Paris” guide, more pre-Revolutionary lanes and buildings than anywhere else in town.
Another day of our April ’12 visit was spent in and around the Père Lachaise Cemetery, the final resting place of many of Paris’ illustrious dead. Covering 100 acres, this is the largest cemetery in Paris proper, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. This is a famous tourist site in Paris, but it was quite empty of live people; there were very few other visitors.
We found the tombs of Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Molière, Chopin and Édith Piaf, missing many others.
Oscar Wilde’s immense gravestone is protected by a 7-foot-tall plate-glass wall, erected to keep ardent admirers at a distance.
The most moving memorials, which were not covered in the books we read, were the monuments to victims of the Holocaust. The bronze sculptures truly captured the horror of the situation. These are located in a far corner of the cemetery and are mesmerizing.
On a Sunday, we visited Le Petit Palais (Ave. Winston Churchill), another free museum, which contains a broad collection of paintings and sculpture from ancient Greece to the 1900s. This palace was built for the 1900 Universal Exhibition, like the neighboring Grand Palais (which isn’t free). Whether you’re impressed with the art or not, the building and courtyard are treasures by themselves.
Nearby, in the rue Cler neighborhood, is the interdenominational American Church (65 quai d’Orsay), a nerve center for the American émigré community in Paris. Concerts are occasionally offered on Sundays, and we attended one — a delightful event and also free (though donations are accepted).
JACK DINI
Livermore, CA