This is the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, an institution whose roots stretch back over three and a half centuries, and whose halls contain the very heartbeat of French natural science. It is one of my favourite museums, both for its collections, its history and my personal histoire with this gorgeous institution and curators over the years.
From Royal Garden to Scientific Powerhouse
The Museum began humbly in 1635 as the Jardin du Roi, a royal medicinal garden established by King Louis XIII. Initially devoted to growing plants for healing, it soon attracted scholars hungry for classification, exploration, and discovery. By 1793, during the fervour of the French Revolution, the garden transformed into the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, formally dedicated to the full study of nature—its rocks, its creatures, its ancient past.
The new Museum wasn’t just a repository of curiosities. It became an intellectual engine, a place where comparative anatomy, paleontology, and evolutionary science were tested, debated, and sometimes fought over with near-religious intensity. Naturalists trained here went on to explore every corner of the globe, collecting specimens that would build one of the world’s greatest scientific archives.
Galleries That Feel Like Time Machines
Grande Galerie de l’Évolution
Entering this gallery feels like walking into a cathedral built for life itself. Under its towering iron-and-glass nave, rebuilt in 1994, enormous whales hang suspended above schools of preserved fish, birds, mammals, and invertebrates. These iconic displays are storytelling machines, showing how organisms diversify, adapt, flourish, and sometimes vanish.
Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie Comparée
This is where your pulse quickens. Completed in 1898, the paleontology hall is a long gallery glowing with raw scientific drama. Grinning skulls and articulated skeletons stride along the central walkway: Iguanodon, Allosaurus, Diplodocus, and early horses like Anchitherium. The fossil collection here is one of Europe’s richest, built from centuries of field expeditions and intense scientific rivalry.
I had the very great pleasure of exploring this gallery to photograph it using natural light early in the mornings before the crowds were let in to explore. It is the picture perfect museum in terms of how they choose to display the specimens and the rich history they tell.
As I peered at each fossil, I was thrilled to think of its moment of discovery and deeply honoured to view it unhurried in the quiet hush of my early morning visits. Looking closer, my eyes were delighted by so many treasures:
The holotype of Anoplotherium commune, studied by Georges Cuvier as he developed his revolutionary ideas on extinction.
A beautifully preserved Mammuthus primigenius skull hauled from Siberian permafrost.
Jurassic marine invertebrates—ammonites, belemnites, and ichthyosaur remains—collected from classic French sites such as Normandy, the Causses, and the Paris Basin.
The upstairs gallery houses comparative anatomy, where countless skeletons and organs are preserved in glass jars—a dizzying testament to centuries of study.
Galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie
A quieter but equally dazzling space. Massive amethyst geodes glow violet in dim light, meteorites sit in solemn rows, and cabinets showcase minerals collected during Napoleonic-era expeditions. The Museum’s mineral collection is legendary, containing more than 600,000 specimens.
The Paleontologists Who Shaped the Museum—and Science
Georges Cuvier (1769–1832)
Often called the father of vertebrate paleontology, Cuvier worked in the galleries that predate the Museum and helped build the foundations of its collections. His meticulous anatomical studies of fossil vertebrates established extinction as a scientific fact—a radical idea at the time. Many specimens he worked on still sit in climate-controlled cabinets within meters of where he once lectured.
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844)
Cuvier’s intellectual rival—famous for his battles over anatomical homology. Their debates filled lecture halls and contributed to the Museum’s reputation as a crucible of scientific progress.
Albert Gaudry (1827–1908)
A pioneering paleontologist whose work on Miocene mammals from Pikermi, Greece, helped advance early evolutionary theory. Many of his comparative specimens form the backbone of the Museum’s rich mammalian fossil collection.
Marcellin Boule (1861–1942)
Director of the Museum and one of the most influential paleontologists of the early 20th century. Boule described the famous La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neanderthal, shaping early views of human evolution—sometimes incorrectly, sometimes brilliantly. His office overlooked the very galleries where those fossils are still displayed.
The Museum weathered both world wars—sometimes narrowly.
World War I — Many staff members were conscripted, and scientific expeditions halted. Parts of the collections were quietly relocated away from potential bombing sites. Yet the Museum remained open, a place of solace for Parisians seeking continuity amid chaos.
World War II — This was the more dangerous period for the museum. As German occupation tightened, curators scrambled to protect vulnerable collections:
Rare manuscripts and irreplaceable type fossils were packed into crates and hidden in cellars beneath the galleries. Some specimens were quietly transferred to rural estates outside Paris.
The Museum’s botanical greenhouses were kept running despite shortages, symbolically maintaining the “living” portion of the institution when much around it seemed precarious.
A lesser-known fact: Allied bombing raids damaged parts of the Jardin des Plantes, shattering glasshouses and breaking roof sections in several galleries. Miraculously, no major fossil collections were destroyed, largely thanks to the foresight of curators who had reinforced windows with sandbags and internal bracing.
Perhaps most intriguingly, German officers with interests in natural science reportedly toured the galleries—but staff resisted all pressure to surrender key specimens, sometimes hiding them within other displays or tucking them out of view.
Today, the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle remains one of the world’s most active centers for research in biodiversity, paleontology, anthropology, and geoscience. Its galleries invite millions of visitors to wander through deep time, marvel at natural wonders, and walk the same floors once trod by Cuvier, Saint-Hilaire, Boule, and generations of explorers whose stories are embedded in every fossil case and herbarium drawer.
I highly recommend you take the time to visit the Museum and stroll through its many galleries, enjoying the history of life on Earth and the many individuals who have dedicated their lives to understanding it.
