Monnaie de Paris

Historic · Quai de Conti, Saint-Germain-des-Prés (6th)Paris,France

A Paris mint that has struck metal without a break since 864, now making medals and art castings by hand behind an eighteenth-century quay front.

The Monnaie de Paris has been striking coin since 864, when Charles the Bald set up a royal minting workshop in the city. It calls itself the oldest institution in France, and the claim rests on never having stopped — not on the walls, which are far younger, but on the work carried on inside them without a break. The institution is more than nine hundred years older than the building you are standing in. Walk the riverside front and you are looking at an eighteenth-century answer to a ninth-century job. Antoine designed a factory with a palace front: an Ionic portico on the river, courtyards behind it, and a production line laid out through the middle so that metal moved from one operation to the next. Everyday coin left for a plant at Pessac in 1973. What stayed in Paris is the slow work: medals, art castings and collector pieces, each one cut, struck and finished by hand. The building still does the job it was built for, which almost no building of its age anywhere does. The courtyards are open, and most people on the quay walk past a working foundry without noticing.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The workshops are on the visitor route, not behind it — The museum was laid out along the same level as the production, so the engraving benches and the foundry are part of what you walk past.
Look at the portico from across the road — Antoine put huge Ionic columns on a building whose real job was industrial, and only from the far pavement can you see how big they are.
Contemporary art shows use the old halls — The mint puts on exhibitions in the historic production rooms, so what is on may be modern art rather than anything about coins.

Things to do

1
Walk the courtyards without paying anything
There is a way through from the quay to rue Guénégaud across the inner courtyards. Take it slowly. You pass service doors, delivery bays and the backs of workshops, and that walk shows you a working factory, which the grand front on the river does not.
2
Watch a medal being struck
The visit route runs past working benches rather than reconstructions. The design of a medal is first cut into a steel die, which is then hardened. The die is pressed into the metal under enormous force, often several times, with the metal softened by heating in between. Seeing the die and the finished medal side by side explains why one press is not enough.
3
Compare the river front with the yard behind it
Stand under the Ionic columns on the quay, then walk round into the courtyards and look at the same building from the inside. The river front was built to be seen from the Louvre side of the Seine. The courtyards behind it were built for moving metal between workshops. The two belong to one design, made for two different purposes.