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Museums of the Marais

    I you like museums and galleries, you'll love the Marais, because it has more of both than any other neighborhood in Paris. Here is a small sampling of those museums, all within a ten minute walk of the rue Dupuis. (We like the idea of a museum in the morning and home for lunch; or perhaps a museum in the afternoon and home for a quick nap and a Jacuzzi before the evening outing.)

    The Picasso Museum on the rue Thorigny is located in a particularly fabulous 17th century mansion, restored to perfection. It contains the world's most important collection of Picasso's works; the artist's paintings, sculptures, ceramics, drawings and prints are displayed in a setting that can only be described as magnificent.

    The imposing Pompidou Center is a work of art in itself. It also has an important collection of modern art and boasts a constantly changing series of traveling exhibitions. (A recent show dedicated to Cocteau was a terrific success.) Outside the museum, the piazza is home to a perpetual street fair, a kind of ever-changing outdoor theater filled with performers, artists and miscellaneous hangers-on, a kind of Parisian Harvard Square or Dupont Circle.

    The Musée Carnavalet is another Marais museum (like Picasso) that is housed in a magnificent 17th century hôtel particulier (a term which means, in this context, a particularly luxurious private palace). Carnavalet is the museum of the History of the City of Paris and is relatively unknown to tourists, although its collection, as well as the palace itself, is one of the city's great treasures.

    On the south side of the rue de Bretagne, the rue Dupuis changes names and becomes the rue des Archives. The street is named after the French National Archives that are housed here, in the Hôtel Soubise, yet another magnificent 17th century hôtel particulier; the Hôtel Soubise also houses an excellent museum dedicated to the History of France.

    The Musée des Arts et Métiers, another of the great unknown treasures of Paris, has recently been entirely renovated and re-installed. It is the museum of technical innovation; it is about a two minute walk from the rue Dupuis.

    The Museum of the Art and History of Judaism includes not only historical documents (check out the fascinating material on the Dreyfus case); it also includes a fine collection of paintings by such masters as Soutine, Chagall and Modigliani.

    And if this small sampling is not enough, you might like to visit the Doll Museum, the Musée de la Chasse et Nature (Hunting and Nature); Victor Hugo's apartments in the Place des Vosges, or last but not least, the Musée du Patrimoine Photographique, located in yet another magnificent 17th century hôtel particulier, the Hôtel de Sully.

    All of these museums are located in the Marais; all are within a ten minute walk of the rue Dupuis.

    The Marais is also one of Paris' favored locations for art galleries. Many of them are superb; most are quite tiny. On the tiny rue Dupuis, we have (as of this writing) five excellent galleries; we have a particular weakness for the handsome and dramatically installed gallery of primitive art next door to the apartment.)

   On to shopping!