Musée des Archives Nationales

The Musée des Archives Nationales is defined by a colonnade of coupled columns that curve behind a screen wall to form a semicircular courtyard. This site sits at the heart of the Marais and occupies the Hôtel de Soubise, a mansion originally built in the early eighteenth century for the Prince and Princess of Soubise. It opened as a museum in eighteen sixty-seven under Napoleon the Third, with the goal of displaying the most significant documents from the French state archives to the public.