Musée des Monuments français (1795–1816)

The Musée des Monuments français occupies the former convent of the Petits-Augustins. It serves as a rescue mission for the French Revolution. When revolutionaries began tearing down statues of kings and saints across France, Alexandre Lenoir organized this space to house the fragments. He pulled pieces from the rubble and arranged them chronologically through the convent’s courtyards and chapels. Visitors wandered from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth, tracing the physical history of the nation among salvaged tombstones and broken royal faces.