The Most Unusual Museums in Paris

Paris has countless small and bizarre museums, little corners where someone's bid for immortality goes unnoticed. Let’s go through some of the most unusual Museums in Paris.

MUSÉE D’HISTOIRE DE LA MÉDECINE (MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE)

There you can find plenty of grim handsaws, drills, and other unnerving medical instruments. Some items, by contrast, are charming, like the painted pharmacy jars from Renaissance Italy. The museum also has an intricate wooden anatomical model that Napoleon Bonaparte ordered for Paris’s medical school during his Italian campaign, as well as the tools used for his autopsy.

MUSÉE DES ARTS FORAINS (MUSEUM OF FAIRGROUND ARTS)

Vines twine around mermaids and chandeliers in the courtyard, while inside, carousels, arcade games, and other finds are artfully arranged and recombined. Figures rescued from a shuttered wax museum, including those of Louis Pasteur, painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Thomas Edison, wear colorful costumes from a long-lived Paris theater, the Folies Bergère. Both children and adult visitors to the museum can play the vintage arcade games and ride the carousels.

PHONO MUSEUM

The Phono Museum has a collection of sound recording technology dating back as far as the 1880 cabinet-size mechanical music box from Switzerland, and spanning everything from 1930s phonographs to a record player from the studios of Radio France.

MUSÉE DE LA MAGIE AND MUSÉE DES AUTOMATES (MUSEUM OF MAGIC AND THE MUSEUM OF AUTOMATONS)

More than 100 mechanical figures come to life with the push of a button, waving wands, playing instruments, or swinging on swings in the automaton collection. Most date to the 18th and 19th centuries.