Archives nationales, National archives in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine and 3rd arrondissement of Paris, France.

The Archives nationales is an institution spanning two locations: a complex in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine and a site in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. The collections include government records, private papers, and materials covering multiple centuries of French history.

The institution was created in 1789 by the French Constituent Assembly and officially established in September 1790. A more recent expansion to Pierrefitte-sur-Seine enabled the facility to store significantly more materials and grow its holdings.

The Paris site in the Marais occupies the Hôtel de Soubise and the Hôtel de Rohan, townhouses whose salons visitors pass on the way to the reading rooms. The Paris notaries' records, kept here for five centuries, draw genealogists from many countries. The name Archives nationales dates from the Revolution, when the institution was founded to gather the state's papers.

The institution works from two sites: the historical site in the Marais, in the 3rd arrondissement, and the Pierrefitte-sur-Seine site in the northern suburbs, opened in 2013. Records from before the French Revolution and the Paris notaries' archives are kept in the Marais; post-revolutionary state records and private archives are at Pierrefitte. Check which site holds the documents you need before travelling.

The facility in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine includes a building with roughly 320 km of shelving space, making it one of Europe's largest archive storage facilities. This capacity reveals how seriously France takes preserving its documentary heritage.