NEW PARIS MUSEUM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 September 1939, Page 5

NEW PARIS MUSEUM

MANY HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. Paris has still another museum, the Museum of the History of France. This museum was inaugurated recently by M Jean Zay, Minister of National Education, at the Archives Nationales. The Museum of History is appropriately installed in a historical residence, the Hotel' de Soubise, built in 1705, a mansion with a handsome colonacled courtyard, where .you leave Paris of today as you step over the threshold. A Museum of History naturally contains a majority of documents, and the most interesting among, 600,000 contained in the Archives Nationales are displayed here. The most ancient document, on papyrus, dates from 627 and is the confirmation of a will made by a. merchant in favour of the Abbey of St Denis. -I The museum also contains the most i ancient document written on paper, a j register of payments received by a

certain Alphonse de Poitiers between 1243 and 1248. A document that attracts much attention is the famous Edict of Nantes as well as its Revocation. Here, too, are the treaties of peace of Westphalia and Bretigny, and the wills of Pascal and Voltaire. A room devoted to documents of the French Revolution contains, among many others, , letters by Marie Antoinette, as well as the will of Louis XVI. The Napoleon period provides many letters written by the Emperor and documents signed by him. In addition there are a host of letters from nearly all the famous figures of history ,and the new museum keep'; well to the traditions of the fine museums of Paris.