Musée des Collections Historiques de la Préfecture de Police, Police history museum in 5th arrondissement, Paris, France

The Museum of Historical Collections of the Paris Police Prefecture displays uniforms, weapons, documents, and equipment spanning multiple centuries of law enforcement work. The collection shows how police methods and tools evolved through personal items, case files, and official records from different periods.

The museum was created in 1909 on the initiative of prefect Louis Lépine, using items gathered for the 1900 Exposition Universelle; donations and acquisitions have enlarged the collection since. It occupies 300 m² on the third floor of the police headquarters at 4, rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève and forms part of the Service de la mémoire et des affaires culturelles. A move to part of the former 36, quai des Orfèvres building on the Île de la Cité was considered after 2017.

The museum's full name, Musée des Collections Historiques de la Préfecture de Police, refers to the historical collections assembled by the Paris police prefecture. Its displays draw on definitive archives held by the prefecture's memory and cultural affairs service, including registers of prisoners and royal lettres de cachet. Cases such as the poison affair, the Queen's Necklace, Landru and Petiot are presented by name.

The museum sits in the 5th arrondissement and opens Monday through Saturday with free entry for all visitors. You can reach it easily on foot, and group tours are available if you arrange them in advance.

The guillotine displayed here is a whole wooden apparatus with two folding side panels on a black metal base, not merely a blade. Nearby stands a pale headless torso, and a glass case holds a wooden box and papers beside a panel on Alphonse Bertillon, the police officer who devised anthropometric identification.