The Concorde balcony
A view over the square from a height open to no one else.
Lionel Allorge — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Jean-Pierre Dalbéra — CC BY 2.0 · Rijksmuseum — CC0 · DiscoA340 — CC BY-SA 4.0
Because it **wasn't open**. The building housed the **French Ministry of the Navy** for more than two centuries and was not a public building; the ministry left in 2015, a vast restoration followed over several years, and it opened to the public only in **2021**. So you won't find it in older guidebooks or in "top ten sights" lists. That works in your favour: it is **far less crowded** than the great Paris museums despite standing on the city's most famous square.
Two things. First, the **smart audio headset**: it follows your position through the rooms and automatically plays sound, conversation and effects tied to exactly where you are standing — you hear the household's servants and the eighteenth-century street noise instead of reading a label. Second, the **balcony**: you step out over the Place de la Concorde from a height available to no one but the building's visitors, and see the obelisk, the Champs-Élysées and the Louvre in one line. Those two alone justify the ticket.
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One of the two matching buildings that close the **Place de la Concorde** on its northern side — you have walked past it dozens of times if you have been in Paris, but it was not open until **2021**. It was built in the eighteenth century to a design by **Gabriel**, Louis XV's architect, originally as the **Crown furniture repository**: the place where the king's furniture, the crown jewels, his carpets and his arms were kept. It then housed the French **Ministry of the Navy** for more than two centuries, until it moved out in 2015. Great events happened in front of its balcony: from it the **guillotine** on the Place de la Révolution was watched, and in this building the decree **abolishing slavery** in the French colonies was signed in 1848. It underwent a vast restoration lasting years and opened to the public in 2021, and what you see today is a precise recreation of the eighteenth-century apartments of the **intendant of the Crown repository**: rooms furnished entirely, with their colours, textiles and vessels as they were. ⚠ The visit uses a **smart audio headset** that follows your position through the rooms and plays sound and scenes — an unusual experience in a historic house.
A view over the square from a height open to no one else.
18th-century rooms furnished exactly as they were.
Here the abolition of slavery in the French colonies was signed.
2 Place de la Concorde, 75008 Paris