Museum of French Monuments

About

The Musée des Monuments français is a Parisian museum opened from 1795 to 1816 where architectural pieces recovered after the popular wave of destruction of the heritage during the first French revolutionary period (1789-1794) are preserved. He helped create the idea of "historical monument" and inventory. The painter Alexandre Lenoir is the first director of the museum, housed in a former 17th-century convent on the left bank of the Seine in Paris: the convent of Petits-Augustins.

When the premises were closed in 1816, they were assigned to the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. In 1879, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc recast a museum of French monuments within the newly built Trocadéro Palace.