Musée Fragonard d'Alfort

The Musee Fragonard in Maisons-Alfort belongs to the Ecole nationale veterinaire d'Alfort, the world's second-oldest veterinary school, founded in 1766. Famous and unsettling in equal measure are the ecorches of Honore Fragonard, a cousin of the painter Jean-Honore Fragonard, who preserved flayed human and animal specimens in dramatic poses; the best known is a rider on a horse loosely echoing Durer's Apocalyptic Horsemen. The collection also includes skeletons with malformations, wax moulages, embryology, equine hoof pathologies and a deep library of early textbooks. The display deliberately keeps its turn-of-the-century atmosphere, with dark cabinets and handwritten labels. For anyone drawn to anatomy, medical history or the uncanny, it is one of the most singular museums around Paris.