Carnavalet is small, but exquisite and totally fascinating. The models of the city during various periods are cool, as is the exhibit on Lutece (Roman Paris). But best are the little things, like Proust's bedroom or locks of hair from Marie Antoinette and family during their pre-guillotine imprisonment. If you get off on history and its objects, this is a wonderful and relatively unknown place (i.e., you're not fighting for standing room with half the tourists in Europe!). The location in the Marais is also really beautiful.

Of Parisian museums, I have been to the Louvre, d'Orsay, Picasso, and Carnavalet. This is my favorite It is a museum of the history of Paris with beautiful scale models of the city, period rooms, and paintings. It is eminently doable and leaves you exhilirated rather than exhausted. You do not feel you have been through combat with other museum goers. You will understand differences among furnishings of Louis XIV, XV, XVI, first and second empire in the series of rooms they have in a very short time. There is also Marcel Proust's bedroom. Entry was free.

On my two recent trips to Paris, a city I truly love, I visited this fine museum. It shows in a series of deft exhibits the fazcinating history of Paris and its citizens. From ancient Roman artifacts to complete rooms recreated from the time of The Sun King, you can experience all that has gone before you. The museum itself inhabits one of those fabulous private residences that once baricaded the nobility from the have-nots that made their pampered lives so elegant. Oh, just go!