Musée national des Monuments Français

The Musee des Monuments Francais fills the Palais de Chaillot with plaster casts of the most famous sculpture and architecture in France. It began in eighteen seventy-nine when Viollet-le-Duc proposed gathering copies of medieval and Renaissance portals to save them from neglect. He wanted to show Parisians their own history in one room. When a fire destroyed the Trocadero in nineteen thirty-five, the collection survived and moved into the current wings, housing everything from cathedral doorways to massive ornate columns.