Musée des monuments français, Architectural museum in 16th arrondissement of Paris, France.
The Musée des monuments français occupies the Paris wing of the Palais de Chaillot, where its ground-floor gallery displays full-size plaster casts of French monumental sculpture from the 12th to the 19th century. A freestanding Gothic stone structure with tiered spires and carved figures stands under the vaulted metal-and-glass roof, and a massive carved stone portal with a rounded archway faces a low bench.
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc founded the museum in 1879 to document and preserve French architectural heritage through reproductions. This project allowed scholars to study important details from monuments in one place without risking damage to original sites.
The name recalls Alexandre Lenoir's 1795 Musée des Monuments français, which displayed real medieval and Renaissance monuments removed from churches after the Revolution until 1816. Today the Galerie Davioud shows casts of the 13th-century Strasbourg Cathedral and late 13th-century Bourges Cathedral, while the wall-painting gallery, inaugurated on 14 June 1945, reproduces Romanesque and Gothic murals at full scale.
The museum occupies the Paris wing of the Palais de Chaillot at 1, place du Trocadéro et du 11 Novembre. It is open daily except Tuesday, and an admission fee is charged. The plaster casts fill the ground floor, while wall paintings and stained glass are shown on two levels at the end of the modern architecture gallery.
The museum contains detailed replicas of cathedral portals and façade sections from the Middle Ages that would be unreachable in their original locations. These casts allow visitors to see artistic details up close that sit high above ground or in inaccessible places at actual cathedrals.
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