Musée du Moyen Age

Today was Free Museum Sunday! We took advantage by going to two museums: Musée Gustave Moreau and Musée de la Vie Romantique. More on those later. Right now we want to travel back in time two months to the last Free Museum Sunday we indulged in, joined by my mom and Cathy at Paris's Museum of the Middle Ages.

As with many museums in Paris, the Musée du Moyen Age collection competes for attention with the building itself, which is a 16th-century former abbey built on top of the ruins of Roman baths dating back 2,000 years. That said, the collection is pretty good too - antiquities dug up on site, medieval woodwork and portraits, and the famous series of late-15th-century tapestries known as La Dame et la licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn).

We managed to make it to the museum for the last day of an exhibit on Asterix, the French cartoon character, and got to learn about the cartoonists' creative process. Asterix looked right at home in the middle of those Roman baths!

Elsewhere in the museum, we enjoyed the Flamboyant Gothic ceiling of the chapel (left), a room full of reliquaries (middle), and a 16th-century version of the Buddy Christ (right).

The Musée du Moyen Age is a cool place to go - especially on a hot day (thanks to those Roman baths) - but also any other time. Check it out!