Paris has more than its fair share of famous museums — start with the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Centre Pompidou, and then move to the Musée Rodin, the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Musée National Picasso-Paris, and the Musée de l’Armée-Invalides. But what if you want something smaller, less crowded, more intimate? Here are five lesser-known (but still fabulous) options for your consideration.

Hôtel de la Marine

The Hôtel de la Marine has housed many things since its completion in 1774: a royal museum of the decorative arts, private apartments, a chapel, and the Ministry of the Navy (you can see the glitzy Salon of the Admirals above). Marie Antoinette even set up shop here when she came into Paris from Versailles. So this is a great museum if you like your museums sumptuous and ornate.

Most of the Hôtel de la Marine has been refurbished to look as it would have when the last Intendant of the Garde-Meuble — the guy in charge of furnishing all of the French royal properties — was in residence between 1784 and 1792. So it’s a wonderful place for anyone who likes a house museum (especially a very large, very wealthy house museum).

A free audio guide walks you through each room, which is both helpful and enjoyable if you can ignore the odd sound effects and the fact that the narrator purports to be a ghost. You’ll see everything from the dining room …

… to the gaming salon …

… to the master bath, complete with a tub that had hot running water stored in a secret tank in the ceiling.

An entirely separate, significantly smaller section of the museum houses the Al Thani Collection, which showcases pieces brought together by the royal family of Qatar. This seems like a very random add-on, but also a very nice one, because you basically get a tiny second museum for the price of one. The exhibits here rotate; when I visited, they were displaying treasures from the Renaissance.

Hôtel de la Marine: To Know Before You Go

• Suggested Visit Time: 1 1/4 – 1 1/2 hours
• Closest Metro: Concorde
• Cost: 13 Euros and up
• Open: Every day of the week

Musée Cognacq-Jay

The Musée Cognacq-Jay celebrates the fine and decorative arts of the 18th century. Department store owner Théodore-Ernest Cognacq and his wife Marie-Louise Jaÿ amassed the collection in the early 1900s, and it traveled from its original home to its current jewel box of a space in the Marais in 1990. It seems fitting that many of the pieces, such as snuffboxes and chatelaines, are as small as the museum itself.

The space devoted to the permanent collection here seems remarkably small — move too quickly, and you’ll feel like you’ve missed everything but a few paintings by the likes of Watteau, Boucher, and Canaletto.

Instead, the museum appears to have thrown more of its not insignificant weight behind its exhibition space. I was lucky to catch the spectacular Luxe de Poche exhibit, which focuses on tiny luxury objects owned and admired by the social elite of the 18th century.

I love a museum that’s focused, interesting, and manageable, and the Musée Cognacq-Jay ties all of these together nicely.

Musée Cognacq-Jay: To Know Before You Go

• Suggested Visit Time: 45 minutes – 1 hour
• Closest Metro: Chemin Vert or Saint-Paul
• Cost: 6 Euros and up — don’t believe the websites that claim it’s free!
• Open: Every day except Monday

Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature

The Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, or the Museum of Hunting and Nature, was founded in 1964 by a couple who collected over 3,000 items — guns, paintings, ceramics, engravings, real animals, fake animals, and more — related to hunting.

The museum may have “nature” in its title, but the focus is truly much more on the hunting side. In addition to dedicated spaces for fancy old guns and displays about man’s best hunting friends, you’ll find rooms dedicated to individual prey animals — boars, bears, birds, and so on.

Unsurprisingly, taxidermy also has pride of place.

While it feels like hunting is at the museum’s heart, the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature has done a nice job of trying to weave some contemporary nature-related pieces into the space. So you don’t just feel like you’re looking at hunting items and trophies from days of yore; there’s a bit more complexity to be found, especially on the upper floor.

Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature: To Know Before You Go

• Suggested Visit Time: 1 hour
• Closest Metro: Rambuteau
• Cost: 9 Euros and up
• Open: Every day except Monday

Musée Nissim de Camondo

This is a true house museum — specifically, the house of banker Count Moïse de Camondo, completed in 1914. The stars of the show here are both the elaborate rooms themselves …

… and the outstanding examples of decorative arts, including tapestries, furniture, sculpture, ceramics, and Sèvres porcelain.

Much of the Musée Nissim de Camondo‘s collection is rooted in the second half of the 18th century, so it’s fitting that the building created to house all of this was modeled on the Petit Trianon at Versailles.

One of the fun things at the Musée Nissim de Camondo is that you get to see the house all the way down to the kitchen, complete with wax fruits and vegetables.

As of the time of this writing, there’s a great (if both lengthy and sobering) video about the Camondo family on the second floor. Beyond that, there’s precious little in the way of signage, which I found a bit frustrating. But there’s so much wonderful stuff to see that I didn’t always mind. And the museum is about to close for renovations, so who knows what will be in store when it reopens?

Musée Nissim de Camondo: To Know Before You Go

• Suggested Visit Time: 1 – 1 1/4 hours
• Closest Metro: Monceau or Villiers
• Cost: 13 Euros and up
• Open: Every day except Monday and Tuesday
• Note: The Musée Nissim de Camondo will be closed for renovations beginning on August 5, 2024. Please keep an eye on their website for the grand reopening date.

Musée des Archives Nationales

Napoleon set up the French National Archives in this grand early-18th century building, the Hôtel de Soubise, in 1808. There’s been a museum here since 1867, though if you visit today, you may feel like you’re seeing three very different museums in one.

On the first floor, the cavernous room housing the permanent exhibit invites you to consider the different ways in which we understand archival material. The permanent exhibit continues through several fairly empty, somewhat ratty-looking rooms, though I found the curation hard to follow. There’s a fancier, better-curated special exhibit space upstairs, but it’s primarily directed at French speakers. So the real draw for me are the Rococo rooms of the Hôtel de Soubise.

The rooms themselves are nearly devoid of furniture; some of them have clearly been converted to multi-purpose spaces.

But if you find yourself in the Marais, this is still a good place to go if you like your world filled with accoutrements like gold, crystal, and 18th-century paintings — and you’re likely to have it nearly all to yourself.

Musée des Archives Nationales: To Know Before You Go

• Suggested Visit Time: 1/2 hour – 45 minutes
• Closest Metro: Rambuteau
• Cost: Free!
• Open: Every day except Tuesday

Bonus Suggestions: Musée de Cluny & Musée Jacquemart-André

In search of other options? For unicorns and all other things medieval, pay a visit to the Musée de Cluny-Musée National du Moyen Âge …

… and for another fabulous house museum — this time with a focus on Italian art — go to the Musée Jacquemart-André.

Looking for more places to explore in Paris? Here are 10 must-see Paris churches to round out your visit.