Architecture and Heritage City Museum

The Cite de l'architecture et du patrimoine is France's national architecture museum, housed in the right wing of the Palais de Chaillot with a direct view of the Eiffel Tower. The core of the collection are the plaster casts of portals, capitals and tympana from French cathedrals, initiated by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc as early as 1879 as the Musee de Sculpture comparee. A second gallery in the same building shows full-scale reconstructions of Romanesque and Gothic wall paintings. A third section documents modern and contemporary architecture and includes a walk-in 1:1 model of Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation apartment. Visitors can move from the medieval Vezelay portal to Le Corbusier's living cell in a single morning, all under one roof. The upstairs cafe offers one of the best Eiffel Tower views in the city. The east wing of the same palace holds the Musee de l'Homme.