Musée Rodin

The Musée Rodin is housed within the Hôtel Biron, an eighteenth-century mansion that was once a prestigious boarding school for aristocratic girls. Before the sculptor Auguste Rodin moved in, the building and its surrounding grounds had fallen into a state of wild, overgrown disrepair. Rodin first discovered this atmosphere in 1908 on the advice of his friend, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and he was captivated by the sight of statues emerging from the untamed greenery. He began by renting a few ground-floor rooms as a studio, eventually occupying the entire estate to create a personal sanctuary for his work.