Musée d'Anatomie Delmas-Orfila-Rouvière

The Musée d'Anatomie Delmas-Orfila-Rouvière hides behind the unassuming grey stone walls of the Université Paris Cité medical school. Inside, thousands of wax models, skeletons, and preserved specimens pack the tall shelves of the mahogany cabinets. Mathieu Orfila, a toxicologist who rose to fame by identifying arsenic in poisoned bodies during the nineteenth century, founded the collection to teach surgical students. The dry, heavy scent of old parchment and formaldehyde lingers among the shelves, still housing the original anatomical puzzles once used by Napoleon's surgeons.