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Paris Sightseeing: On the Paris Museum Trail

Enjoy museum's? You will love Paris. As well as being home to some of the world’s greatest museums, the sheer number and range of dedicated museums in Paris is so extensive that one could explore them for years and discover new wonders each day.

Many of the museums in Paris are remnants of vast personal collections assembled by aristocrats. For instance, the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques stemmed from the jolly travels of one exceedingly rich man. It is now a brilliant and internationally renowned museum and a centre for knowledge of Indianised art.

Other museums stem from the state’s decision to document some phenomena or pay tribute to some aspect of French life. The costume museum (Musée de la Mode et du Textile) contains over 81,000 works which trace the history of costume in France from the Regency period to the present-day and innovations in textiles since the 7th century.

Then there are the undisputed titans of the scene: Musée du Louvre houses the biggest collection of art in the world with some 6 million visitors passing through every year. Home to masterpieces by Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Vermeer and Cezanne, the Louvre is also very popular today due to its part in Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code'

The Sewer Museum (Musée des égouts de Paris) is an obscure and unique look at the famous sewer system of Paris. Beneath Paris there is a veritable city in itself of tunnels, arches and crossroads, and this museum explores the history of this underworld.

Other special interest museums include the Musée de la Monnaie which tells the story of how the rulers fought to control the making of money and of how the techniques of coin striking developed over the centuries; the Musée de la Musique which looks at all things musical, taking visitors through the history of music and instrument-making in Europe; and even the Musée de La Poste which tells the story of post service and of pre-industrial methods of communication in a consistently lively and interesting way.

The last 20 years in particular has seen a large number of great public projects to develop and refurbish Parisian museums, and the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie is a brilliant example of this. The biggest science museum in Europe, the Cité des Sciences incldues a planetarium, an IMAX theatre and all manner of intriguing exhibits.

Paris has always been a city which preserved its past and museums have long been a fixture. There is something for everyone here; museums that will show you the best of the past and the future, arts, culture, commerce, science, technology, craft, politics, war, obsession, greed, heroism, madness even. Paris is an ever-expanding galaxy of museums.