Musée du Général Leclerc de Hauteclocque et de la Libération de Paris – Musée Jean Moulin

The museum you are approaching sits directly above a secret piece of history. Beneath the pavement of Place Denfert-Rochereau lies a former air raid shelter that served as the clandestine command post for the French Resistance during the final, desperate days of the Nazi occupation in August nineteen forty-four. From this bunker, twenty meters underground, Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy coordinated the uprising that helped drive the occupying forces out of the capital. You can still visit these spartan, subterranean chambers, where the soundscape of clicking typewriters and ringing telephones recreates the high-stakes environment in which the city's liberation was orchestrated.