4 Best Sights in The Marais, Paris

If it has to do with Parisian history, it's here: this fascinating hodgepodge of artifacts and art ranges from prehistoric canoes used by the Parisii tribes to the cork-lined bedroom where Marcel Proust labored over his evocative novels. Thanks to scores of paintings, drawings, photographs, furniture, and scale models, nowhere else in Paris can you get such a precise picture of the city's evolution through the ages. The museum fills more than 100 rooms in two adjacent mansions, the Hôtel Le Peletier de St-Fargeau and the Hôtel Carnavalet. The latter is a Renaissance jewel that was the home of writer Madame de Sévigné from 1677 to 1696. Throughout her long life, she wrote hundreds of frank and funny letters to her daughter in Provence, giving an incomparable view of both public and private life during the time of Louis XIV. The museum offers a glimpse into her world, but its collection covers far more than just the 17th century. The exhibits on the Revolution are especially interesting, with scale models of guillotines and a replica of the Bastille prison carved from one of its stones. Louis XVI's prison cell is reconstructed along with mementos of his life, even medallions containing locks of his family's hair. Other impressive interiors are reconstructed from the Middle Ages through the rococo period and into Art Nouveau—showstoppers include the Fouquet jewelry shop and the Café de Paris's original furnishings. From May through September, the museum's sculpted courtyard garden is home to Fabula café and restaurant, a delightful place for a coffee, snack, or meal in one of the Marais's prettiest gardens ( 16 rue des Francs-Bourgeois).

The first installation in this compelling memorial and museum is the deeply moving Wall of Names, tall plinths honoring the 76,000 French Jews deported from France to Nazi concentration camps, of whom only 2,500 survived. Opened in 2005, the center has an archive on the victims, a library, and a gallery hosting temporary exhibitions. The permanent collection includes riveting artifacts and photographs from the camps, along with video testimony from survivors. The children's memorial is particularly poignant and not for the faint of heart—scores of backlit photographs show the faces of many of the 11,000 murdered French children. The crypt, a giant black marble Star of David, contains ashes recovered from the camps and the Warsaw ghetto. You can see the orderly drawers containing small files on Jews kept by the French police. (France officially acknowledged the Vichy government's role only in 1995.) The history of anti-Semitic persecution in the world is revisited, as well as the rebounding state of Jewry today. There is a free guided tour in English the second Sunday of every month at 3.

This excellent museum traces the tempestuous backstory of French and European Jews through art and history. Housed in the refined 17th-century Hôtel St-Aignan, exhibits have good explanatory texts in English, but the free English audio guide adds another layer of insight; guided tours in English are also available on request (€4 extra). Highlights include 13th-century tombstones excavated in Paris; a wooden model of a destroyed Eastern European synagogue; a roomful of early paintings by Marc Chagall; and Christian Boltanski's stark two-part tribute to Shoah (Holocaust) victims in the form of plaques on an outer wall naming the (mainly Jewish) inhabitants of the Hôtel St-Aignan in 1939, and canvas hangings with the personal data of the 13 residents who were deported and died in concentration camps. The museum also mounts excellent temporary exhibitions, like the recent "Chagall, Modigliani, Soutine: Paris as a School, 1940." The rear-facing windows offer a view of the Jardin Anne Frank. To visit the garden, use the entrance on Impasse Berthaud, off Rue Beaubourg, just north of Rue Rambuteau.

Mark this down as one of Paris's most distinctive—and fascinating—collections around the theme of "humans and nature." The museum, housed in the gorgeous 17th-century Hôtel de Guénégaud, features lavishly appointed rooms stocked with animal- and hunt-theme art and sculpture by the likes of Rubens and Gentileschi, as well as antique weaponry and taxidermy interspersed with contemporary works by artists such as Jeff Koons, Sophie Calle, and Walton Ford. In a tribute to Art Nouveau, the decor incorporates chandeliers and railings curled like antlers. Older kids will appreciate the jaw-dropping Trophy Room's impressive menagerie of beasts, not to mention the huge polar bear stationed outside. There is a lovely multimedia exhibit on the myth of the unicorn, as well as charming interactive displays on antique weaponry and bird calls. Temporary exhibits take place on the first floor, with works scattered throughout the permanent collection. There's also a spacious café.