| Description |  |
The Musée de Cluny, officially known as Musée National du Moyen Âge, is a museum in Paris. It is located in the 5th arrondissement at 6 Place Paul Painlevé, south of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, between the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Rue Saint-Jacques.
The museum houses a variety of important medieval artifacts, in particular its tapestry collection, which includes La Dame à la Licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn) from the tapestry cycle of the same name, consisting of a series of six. Other notable works stored there include early Medieval sculptures from the seventh and eighth centuries. There are also works of gold, ivory, antique furnishings, and illuminated manuscripts. |
| History | |
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Thermes de Cluny are an ancient Gallo-Roman ruin lying in the heart of Paris' Ve arrondissement and which are partly subsumed into the Musée de Moyen Age- Hôtel de Cluny.
The present bath ruins constitute about one-third of a massive bath complex that is believed to have been constructed around the beginning of the 3rd century. The best preserved room is the frigidarium with intact architectural elements such as Gallo-Roman vaults, ribs and consoles and fragments of original decorative wall painting and mosaics.
It is believed that the bath complex was built by the influential guild of boatmen of 3rd century Roman Paris or Lutetia as evidenced by the consoles on which the barrel ribs rest being carved in the shape of ships prows. Like all Roman Baths, these baths were freely open to the public, and were meant to be, at least partially, a means of romanizing the ancient Gauls. As the baths lay across the Seine river on the left bank and were unprotected by defensive fortifications, they were easy prey to roving barbarian groups who apparently destroyed the bath complex sometime at the end of the 3rd century.
The bath complex is now partly an archeological site and partly incorporated into the Musée du Moyen Age, and as such is the occasional repository for historic stonework or masonry occasionally found in Paris. The spectacular frigdarium is entirely incorporated within the museum and houses the Pilier des Nautes. Although somewhat obscured by renovations and reuse over the past two thousand years, several other rooms from the bath complex are also incorporated into the museum, notably the gymnasium which now forms part of gallery 9 (Galley of French Kings and sculptures from Notre Dame). The caldarium (hot water room) and the tepidarium (warm water room) are both still present as ruins outside the Musée itself and on the museum's grounds.
The Hôtel de Cluny
The structure is perhaps the most outstanding example still extant of civic architecture in medieval Paris. It was formerly the town house (hôtel) of the abbots of Cluny, started in 1334. The structure was rebuilt by Jacques d'Amboise, abbot in commendam of Cluny 1485-1510; it combines Gothic and Renaissance elements. In 1843 it was made into a public museum, to contain relics of France's Gothic past preserved in the building by Alexandre du Sommerard. It no longer possesses anything originally connected with the abbey of Cluny.
Originally the hôtel, was part of a larger Cluniac complex that also included a building (no longer standing) for a religious college in the Place de la Sorbonne (just south of the present day Hôtel de Cluny along Boulevard Saint-Michel. Although originally intended for the use of the Cluny abbots, the residence was taken over by Jacques d'Amboise, Bishop of Clermont and Abbot of Jumièges, and rebuilt to its present form in the period of 1485-1500.(Horne 2004:62). Occupants of the house over the years have included Mary Tudor, who was installed here after the death of her husband Louis XII by his successor Francis I of France in 1515 so he could watch her more closely, particularly to see if she was pregnant. Seventeenth-century occupants included several papal nuncios including Mazarin.
In 1793 it was confiscated by the state, and for the next three decades served several functions. At one point it was owned by a physician who used the magnificent Flamboyant chapel on the first floor as a dissection room.
In 1833 Alexandre du Sommerard moved here and installed here his large collection of medieval and Renaissance objects. (Album de Museé at 5). Upon his death in 1842 the collection was purchased by the state and opened in 1843, with his son as the museum's first curator. The present gardens, opened in 1971, include a "Forêt de la Licorne" inspired by the tapestries..
The Hôtel de Cluny is partially constructed on the remains of Gallo-Roman baths dating from the third century (known as the Thermes de Cluny ), which are famous in their own right and which may still be visited. In fact, the museum itself actually consists of two buildings: the frigidarium ("cooling room"), where the remains of the Thermes de Cluny are, and the Hôtel de Cluny itself, which houses its impressive collections.
From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermes_de_Cluny
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_de_Cluny
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