Maison de Victor Hugo

Museum · Le Marais, Place des Vosges (4th)Paris,France

The Place des Vosges flat where Hugo lived sixteen years, holding the panelled rooms he designed and built with his own hands.

The Maison de Victor Hugo is the second-floor flat on Place des Vosges where Hugo lived for sixteen years from 1832, kept as a museum since 1903. What makes it different from other writers' houses is that Hugo worked with his hands: he drew, designed furniture, cut and assembled woodwork, and decorated whole interiors floor to ceiling. Some of what you walk through is his own carpentry, taken out of the building it was made for and rebuilt in these rooms. The centrepiece is the Chinese salon, lined in carved dark wood, hung with painted panels and porcelain. He designed and made that room in exile on Guernsey for the house of Juliette Drouet, out of bought and broken furniture he cut up and reassembled; it was taken apart after her death and rebuilt here. The rest of the flat follows his life in three parts — before the exile, during it, after it — and ends with the bedroom furniture from the house where he died. The rooms are small, and at weekends there is a queue on the stairs.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The permanent rooms are free — Entry to the flat and the collection costs nothing, and only the temporary exhibitions are ticketed.
A weekday morning is worth more here than at a big museum — Two tour groups on the same floor block a flat this size completely, with no way round them.
It is on the square itself, at a corner — The door is under the arcade on the south-east side, and the flat is two floors up with a courtyard behind it.
One room is worth the visit — If you are short of time, go straight to the Chinese salon; the rest of the flat makes more sense once you have seen it.

Things to do

1
Stand in the middle of the Chinese salon
The room is small and every surface is decorated. There are carved panels, painted figures and porcelain set into the wood. Stand in the centre and turn round once. Then get close to one panel and look for the letters worked into the pattern: Hugo's initials and Juliette Drouet's, interlaced.
2
Find the ink washes Hugo never published
Some of the framed works on the walls are Hugo's own drawings. They are brown ink washes of castles, seas and ruins, and he made some of them by folding wet paper and pressing it. Get close to one. He did not want them published, because he thought they would change the way readers saw him.
3
Find the furniture from the house where he died
The final rooms hold the furniture from the house where he died in 1885, including his bed. He was eighty-three. The objects are ordinary ones: a table, a chair, a bed. After all the carved and painted rooms, the visit ends with plain everyday furniture.