Photo : Gérard van Spaendonck / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
Muséum national d'histoire naturelle
The Muséum national d'histoire naturelle has its seat at the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris. Its origin goes back to a garden of medicinal plants desired by Guy de La Brosse under Louis XIII: a royal edict created it in 1635 and it opened to the public in 1640. The Museum proper was founded on 10 June 1793 by decree of the National Convention. It is now a major institution of higher education and research, which brings together about 68 million specimens and objects.
The Museum has fourteen sites, three of them open to the public in Paris: the Jardin des Plantes, the Musée de l'Homme and the zoological park. The Jardin des Plantes houses the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution, the mineralogy and geology galleries, palaeontology and comparative anatomy galleries, the great greenhouses, the menagerie, the alpine garden and the ecological garden. You discover there notably minerals, fossils, skeletons and zoological specimens.
