Musée des Arts et Metiers, Paris

The museum of inventors, pioneers, Musée des Arts et Metiers is housed in a gothic monastery dating back to eleventh century, the Saint Martin des Champs. The collection of the museum belongs to the Conservatory of Arts and Crafts from eighteenth century. It is truly an experience to feel the gothic aesthetics of the ancient convent and admire the collection that were once the most innovative objects of their time. 

The most famous one is the pendulum of Foucault. The Franch physicist Léon Foucault, who put a 28 kg pendulum from the ceiling inside the Pantheon in 1851 and shoed the movements of the pendulum on a sand floor during nearly 32 hours, which has finally become the proof of earth rotating around itself. since then many science museums and universities have been exhibiting Foucault’s pendulums, this one inside the Arts and Trades Museum is the original one. Such as the model of the Liberty Statue of Bartholdi, the original piece was the model of the one in New York City’s Staten Island. The museum also hosts three original airplanes, they are hung from the ceiling and you can watch them closer from the platform built in the museum. One of them is Blériot 11, it is the original airplane that Blériot flew in 1909 to cross the English Channel from Calais in France to Dover in the U.K. in 36,5 minutes!.. The collection includes many other objects, the part of an automobile of Citroen, other parts of first trains…

Outside the museum right across the road you’ll find a typical Parisian bistro, on the side road a new generation café/restaurant called 46&3rd.

 Metro: Arts et metiers.