Musée National Picasso-Paris

The Musée National Picasso-Paris occupies the Hôtel Salé, a seventeenth-century mansion identifiable by its grand, theatrical stone facade and an elaborate central staircase inspired by Michelangelo. Built between sixteen fifty-six and sixteen fifty-nine for Pierre Aubert, a tax farmer who grew wealthy collecting the salt tax, the building earned the name Hôtel Salé, or salted hall. Over the centuries, the structure served as the Venetian Embassy, a boarding school where Honoré de Balzac studied, and the headquarters for the Central School of Arts and Manufactures.