This museum is housed in the magnificent manor that once belonged to the abbots of Cluny. Its 27 halls feature Gallo-Roman and Medieval works of art such as the statues of the apostles from Sainte-Chapelle, and master tapestries like the Dame à la Licorne and La Vie Seigneuriale. If you visit the museum’s flamboyant Gothic chapel, you’ll see the early thirteenth-century, double-faced Limousin cross acquired in 1978.The Musée de Cluny has amassed 20 000 works of art over the last 30 years and keeps them in its vaults.Fortunately, some of them are gradually being unearthed for display. The museum’s Renaissance collections, which were put into safekeeping after World War II, will soon be displayed at the Château d’Ecouen’s Renaissance Museum in the Val d’Oise.
Something of a white elephant, the Madeleine has had a checkered career, narrowly avoiding being transformed into a railway station,a stock exchange, a bank, a theater, and yet another temple to the emperor Napoleon. Although building started n 1764, many ups and downs ensued before the Madeleine at last regained its original function in 1842 and was completed as a church. The unmistakable Greek temple form, supported by 52 Corinthian pillars, commands a spectacular perspective down the rue Royale toward the Concorde and beyond. A classic site for society weddings and funerals, the rose marble interior has seen the coffins of Chopin, Josephine Baher, and Marlene Dietrich.
