Musee de Cluny

The building is two things at once: the frigidarium and other rooms of a Gallo-Roman bath complex of around the first or second century, among the most substantial Roman remains in Paris, with a late fifteenth-century mansion for the abbots of Cluny built onto and over them. The collection is medieval, and its centrepiece is The Lady and the Unicorn, six tapestries woven around 1500 in which five depict the senses and the sixth carries the inscription A Mon Seul Desir, whose meaning is still argued over. The heads of the kings of Judah, hacked from Notre-Dame in the Revolution and found buried in 1977, are also here.

What you actually see

• The Lady and the Unicorn - six tapestries in a dedicated round room.
• The Roman frigidarium - a vaulted Gallo-Roman bath hall.
• The Notre-Dame kings' heads - sculpture destroyed in 1793 and recovered in 1977.
• The medieval collection - stained glass, ivories, goldwork and altarpieces.

When to go

Year-round; the museum closes on Mondays. It reopened in 2022 after a long renovation with a new entrance and route. Mornings are quietest.

Honest expectations

The tapestry room is dim by necessity for conservation, so detail takes time to see. The museum is compact and the route now one-way. Photography rules vary by room.

Nearby

The Sorbonne lies south; Notre-Dame is east.