Musée Cognacq-Jay

The Musée Cognacq-Jay began as a rags-to-riches story involving a traveling salesman named Ernest Cognacq and a dressmaker named Marie-Louise Jay. Together, they founded the iconic Parisian department store La Samaritaine, and their immense success allowed them to spend decades amassing one of France's finest private collections of eighteenth-century art and decor. Rather than simply hoarding these treasures, they envisioned a space that felt less like a stiff institution and more like an intimate, inhabited home. When Ernest passed away in 1928, he bequeathed the entire collection to the City of Paris on the condition that it remain accessible and preserved in its entirety.