Exhibition guide
On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of his birth, the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris organizes an exhibition dedicated to Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné (1626-1696). More than 200 works, paintings, objects, drawings, from the museum's collections, important French and foreign public collections and special collections are gathered.
Visit details
- Dates: Wednesday 15 April 2026 to Sunday 23 August 2026: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.
- Venue: Musée Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris, 23, rue Madame de Sévigné, Paris
- Price: De 0 à 15 euros.
- Audience: All audiences
- Source: Event page
About the exhibition
Within the Hôtel Carnavalet, where the famous Parisienne lived from 1677 until her death in 1696, this exhibition recaptures the presence of Madame de Sévigné in Paris, at a time when the city is undergoing major transformations. The author's journey and work support a discovery of the capital in its urban, social, political and artistic dimensions. The exhibition opens on the question of the presence of the epistolary in the collective imagination and its literary posterity and then highlights the place of women in 17th-century Paris, in the context of the diffusion of a gallant culture. A member of an elite who observed from a distance the grandeur of the court of Louis XIV, Madame de Sévigné was an attentive witness of political Paris and seized the violence of the tensions that then passed through history. Finally, the discussion of the day-to-day life of the letterwoman in the Carnival hotel, as he was inhabited by his family, concludes this passage of the century.
Designed with the support of a scientific committee composed of specialists of the work and period, the exhibition is based on the renewal of the critical approach devoted to the epistolary.