Musée des Arts et Métiers

The Musée des Arts et Métiers occupies a former priory where the twelfth-century Saint-Martin-des-Champs church remains anchored to the site. Inside this secular temple of industry, Foucault demonstrated the Earth's rotation in eighteen fifty-one by hanging a pendulum from the vaulted ceiling. The collection preserves the history of innovation, gathering thousands of objects ranging from early printing presses to the original model of the Statue of Liberty. It keeps the tools of discovery under the same roof as the laboratory experiments themselves.