Cluny Museum

About

In the 5th arrondissement of Paris, this museum stands on the ruins of Gallo-Roman baths, on a site the Abbey of Cluny acquired in the 14th century. The Hôtel de Cluny mansion, built in the late 15th century under Abbot Jacques d'Amboise, carries traces of both Gothic and early Renaissance style. The seed of the museum was planted when antiquarian Alexandre Du Sommerard purchased the mansion in 1832; after his death, the French state acquired his collection in 1842, and the museum opened the following year, in 1843. Deep within the galleries hangs 'The Lady and the Unicorn,' a set of six tapestries woven in the 15th century. Five panels depict the five senses, and a sixth carries the inscription 'À Mon Seul Désir' ('To My Only Desire'), evoking another kind of sense altogether. Nearby, the 1st-century Pillar of the Boatmen and the stone heads that once crowned Notre-Dame's Gallery of Kings — displayed here since 1981 — carry their own weight of time. After a major renovation known as 'Cluny 4,' running from 2011 to 2022, the museum reopened in May 2022, its path now leading out to a garden first opened in 1971. Modeled on the unicorn's forest from the tapestries, the garden feels as though the medieval imagination had spilled over into a living flowerbed.