A Walking Tour Paris

At the Avenue Velasquez side of Parc Monceau sits the Musée Cernuschi. This museum was founded in 1898 by Enrico Cernuschi, an Italian banker, in what used to be his home. It contains an impressive collection of Asian art, second only in quality and scope to the Musée Guimet. Cernuschi had collected about 5,000 objects, but these have grown over the years to be now about 12,500. Nine hundred or so are on display at any one time. Highlights include some ancient Chinese bronzes (15th to 3rd century BCE), Han Dynasty artefacts, Tang statues, Tang and Song ceramics and a large 18th-century Japanese Buddha.

Walk down Avenue Velasquez and turn right onto Boulevard Malesherbes, then turn right onto rue de Monceau and the Musée Nissim de Camondo will be on your right at No. 63. This is the former home of Moïse de Camondo, a leading Jewish financier who commissioned architect René Sergent to build a facsimile of the Petit Trianon at Versailles in 1911. He wanted a suitable setting for his stunning collection of 18th-century furniture, tapestries, paintings and objets d’art. The house and its collection were bequeathed to Les Arts Decoratifs in memory of his son, who was killed in World War I. It opened as a museum in 1935. Sadly, his daughter and her family also suffered a horrible fate, being rounded up by the Nazis and sent to die in Auschwitz. The museum has been faithfully restored to resemble an 18th-century town house.