Carnavalet, 2

We visited the Museum of Paris, the Carnavalet, earlier in our stay here, but made it only so far as the Revolution. The Carnavalet is a huge and priceless collection, housed in buildings of fitting age and stature. Our second visit was nearly as overwhelming. We finished, but only because the great museum peters out as the history winds down to the present. 

David's sketch for The Tennis Court Oath, 2 June, 1789, when
members of the National Assembly vowed not to leave Versailles
until they had drafted a constitution; widely regarded as the 
beginning of the Revolution

Hubert Robert's The Bastille in the Early Days of Its Demolition
(a symbol of the monarchy, it had to go)

Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, famous French
inventor

Louis XVI's last few steps...21 January, 1793

Marie Antoinette's

New sheriff in town

But it lasted little more than a decade...Lefevre's
portrait  of Napoleon as a colonel of the Imperial
Guard cavalry

Gerard's portrait of Madame Recamier, not quite
as famous as David's in the Louvre; but finished;
David and the sitter did not get along...

Beautiful furniture of the period

Beautiful, huge scale models in many of the rooms

That storm passed (there would be others) and
Paris resumed its place as the capital of European
culture...above, Lehmann's 1839 portrait of
composer Franz Liszt

Paris as the world now knows it is born: Napoleon
III commissions Baron Haussmann to redesign
and rebuild the city

Whole neighborhoods of Medieval warrens were torn down to
make way for the wide new boulevards; here in the opera district

And the 1890s arrive

Walls of paintings of La Belle Ville

The great exhibition of 1900

Poster advertising one of Sara Bernhardt's plays...
by Alfons Mucha, his first success as a commercial
artist

Proust's boudoir, where the masterpieces were written

Perhaps the highlight for us, Fouquet's fin de siecle jewelry store,
decor by Mucha

An age of great beauty 

From Gertrude Stein's salon

The art deco Rex theater, just a few blocks from us, now being 
renovated

1940s

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1950s

The Pont-Neuf, wrapped by Christo in 1980

An ending in sadness but solidarity