France is without any doubt one of the most beautiful historical countries in Europe. Its capital Paris receives around 42 million tourists yearly, making it the third most visited city in the world. Unfortunately many tourists keep going to the same old places every time they are in town, skipping over some of the other interesting places. However the city hides a number of remarkable museums worth visiting.
Art Museums
If you love art and you are a little bit tired of waiting in line every single time you want to go to the Louvre, instead you can visit the Jacquemart-André museum. It is a small museum with a great collection of Italian art that includes paintings of Bernini and Botticelli, among others, and was founded by the banker and soldier Edouard André and Nélie Jacquemart, his wife, who was a well known painter in the late nineteenth century. Their love for art made them open this outstanding museum to spread it around Paris.
Another lovely art museum in Paris is Musée de l'Orangerie, a big repository of Impressionist and post-Impressionist artistic works from renowned painters like Monet, Matisse, Cezanne and Picasso. You can find this extraordinary museum close to Place de la Concorde.
Pop Culture Museums
If you prefer a unique kind of a museum, go to the Musée du Fumeur or the Smoking Museum. As you may guess, this place shows a large historic collection related to smoking, like carved wooden pipes and hookahs for example. There is also a tour covering the most recent history of smoking and even some famous smokers.
If your interests are more musical, you can pay a visit to the Edith Piaf museum, a two-room museum designed for the singer's most hard-core fans that includes many of her belongings like pictures, fan letters, clothes and even her gold records. Although the admission is free you must make a reservation ahead.
Natural History Museums
Not everything in France is about history or art. One of the most interesting museums you can find in Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine, is the Musée Dupuytren with an exhibit of anatomic anomalies, such as diseases and malformations founded by the surgeon Baron Guillaume Dupuytren. In their collection there aren't only individuals or animals with those attributes displayed, but wax models, pictures and technical books.
Another natural history museum you can visit is the Galerie de l'Évolution, a museum dedicated to fauna diversity on Earth and their habitats. This fantastic museum is located in rue Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, where you can learn a lot about endangered species and evolution.
