Paris > Museums > Musée National du Moyen Age

Musée National du Moyen Age
Musée de Cluny - Cluny Museum

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One of the first rooms you'll encounter at the Musée National du Moyen Age contains sculptures from the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Another important exhibition space on the main floor is Room 10, which houses capitals and sculptures from several churches, including St-Germain-des-Près and Sainte-Geneviève.

An arched doorway leads to Room 11, which displays heads from St-Denis, apostles from the royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, and other sculptures from the 12th and 13th Centuries.

Room 12 features chests, caskets, and several large tapestries from ca. 1500 A.D.

The museum has exhibitions of stained glass in several rooms on the main and first floors.

A high point of the exhibitions upstairs is "The Lady and the Unicorn," which has a circular room to itself. (This picture shows the entrance sign.)

Possibly the most outstanding room is the 15th Century chapel on the first floor, which is reminiscent of Sainte-Chapelle.

This spiral stone staircase is from the abbey that now houses the Musée National du Moyen Age. (The building dates back to the 13th Century and was reconstructed in the early 15th century for Jacques d'Amboise, the Abbot of Cluny at that time.)

The museum gardens are mostly on the north side of the Hôtel de Cluny; a smaller park is on the south side, between the Place Paul-Painlevé and the Rue des Écoles.

The current gardens, which opened in 2000, were designed by landscape artists Eric Ossart and Arnaud Maurières. They blend the traditional and the medieval, with 10 sections that bear names like "The Forest of the Unicorn" and "The Kitchen Garden." There's even a section devoted to herbs and other plants that were used in medieval medicine.

"A calm oasis in the heart of the city" may be a cliché, but it's an apt description of the gardens at the Musée National du Moyen Age in Paris.

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