On rue des Archives there is a courtyard with two bronze stag heads mounted on the walls. That is the way into the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, which occupies two adjoining mansions and is at the same time a collection museum, a collectors’ house and one of the places where contemporary art gets into Paris without announcing itself.
It is a private museum with the «Musée de France» label, and it has two practical catches the other Marais museums do not: it is closed on Mondays and on public holidays, and the desks take no cash. On the other hand, on Wednesdays it stays open until 21:30.
Why does a museum about hunting show work by living artists?
Let’s begin!
1. The hôtel de Guénégaud, which is by François Mansart
The house is a listed 17th-century building by François Mansart, the architect the mansard roof is named after. The museum was opened by André Malraux on 21 February 1967, and had grown out of the collection of François and Jacqueline Sommer.
In 2007 it expanded into the house next door, the 18th-century hôtel de Mongelas, and the rooms now run through both buildings. Before you go in, stop in the courtyard: the facade is symmetrical, severe, with no sculpture, and the only things sticking out of it are those stag heads. They tell you already what kind of museum this is.
2. The painting room, with the stag in the middle
The first surprise is that it does not look like a museum. The rooms have pale wooden walls, parquet floors and furniture: an inlaid cabinet on turned legs, a sofa, the lamps. Hunting pictures hang as they would in a house, and a taxidermied stag stands by the window, behind the sofa.
Why should a museum look like a house?
That is the principle the whole house runs on, and the museum says so: this is the home of a collector with an eye, not a sequence of display cases. Sit on the sofa and look at the room from there: there are not many museums where that feels like the natural thing to do.
3. The cabinets, where the walls are the cases
In the small rooms dark wood covers the walls from floor to ceiling, and inside the wood are the cases: taxidermied birds, dioramas under glass, ceramics, prints, objets d’art, skulls.
The collections run to more than five thousand pieces, and the museum lists them by category: taxidermied animals, arms, works on paper, ceramics, installations, furniture, objets d’art, paintings, photographs, sculpture, tapestries, video. Put like that it sounds like a shopping list; in the rooms it is a considered accumulation, in which every object holds a place somebody chose for it.
4. The falconry hoods
This is the smallest stop, and the best one if you like detail. In a low case, on dark wood, are the hoods put over birds of prey to keep them calm: stitched leather, gold embroidery, and a tuft of coloured feathers on top.
Why does each hood have a different shape?
Read the labels: one says «chaperon sans tirette, forme de pèlerin», a hood with no closing cord, in the shape used for the peregrine falcon, and it is a modern reconstruction after a model of around 1800. Next to it is a «training» hood copied from a medieval English model. These are working objects, not ornaments: each shape suits a different bird.
5. The new floor, six rooms under the roof
The museum closed for works on 1 July 2019 and reopened with an extra storey: six new rooms, 250 square metres more, carved out of the attic and spread across both houses.
The new floor does not repeat the formula of the historic rooms. Here the museum takes on the relationship between people and the living world by putting the historic collections and contemporary art together, and says it did so in an artistic and emotional register rather than a didactic one. In the same works the ground floor gained a roomier entrance and a bookshop with free access: you can go in without a ticket.
6. Contemporary art, which is why you come back
Since the museum was refurbished, its temporary exhibitions have been chances to have contemporary artists work inside the rooms of the collection, rather than in a separate space. It is why this museum has a reputation that goes well beyond its subject.
The practical upshot, for you, is that the ticket price depends on the moment: 13 euros during a temporary exhibition and 11 euros between one exhibition and the next. When you plan the visit, check what is on: until 8 October 2026 it is Les Inséparables, saison 2, made with the école Duperré for Paris Design Week, and from 15 October 2026 to 21 February 2027 comes Ce qui reste by Lionel Sabatté.
Practical information
Data checked on 23 September 2026 on the official website chassenature.org and on its ticket office. Prices and opening hours change: check again before you leave.
Tickets. A full ticket costs 13 euros while a temporary exhibition is on and 11 euros between exhibitions; reduced rates are 11 and 9 euros. No cash: the museum takes cards only. Opening hours. Tuesday to Sunday from 11:00 to 18:00, with a late opening on Wednesdays from 18:00 to 21:30, except in July and August. On 24 and 31 December it closes at 17:00. Closures. Mondays and every public holiday: that is the difference from the other museums in the quarter, and it is worth checking the French calendar before you set off. With children. Pushchairs are not allowed in the rooms and stay at reception. The museum is accessible to visitors with reduced mobility. Getting there. The entrance is at 62 rue des Archives. The stops are Rambuteau on line 11, Hôtel de Ville on line 1, Arts et Métiers on lines 3 and 11 and Étienne Marcel on line 4. How long to allow. The six stops need an hour and a half. Wednesday evening, with the late opening, is when there are fewest people.
The exhibitions on at the museum, with their dates, are in the table of exhibitions in Paris.
Where to go from here
You are two hundred metres from the mahJ and a few minutes from the Musée Picasso, the Musée Cognacq-Jay and the Musée Carnavalet; the Maison de Victor Hugo is on the other side of the quarter, on place des Vosges. If you are curious about how Paris museums display things that are not paintings, the natural next stop is the Musée du quai Branly.
Photo credits: courtyard of the hôtel de Guénégaud by Pline (CC BY-SA 3.0); room with the stag and falconry hoods by Heidi Meudt (CC BY 4.0), from Wikimedia Commons.
