The church of machines
Aircraft soaring beneath Gothic vaults and Foucault's original pendulum tracing the Earth's turn — Europe's strangest, finest display hall.
Arnaud 25 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Krzysztof Golik — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Krzysztof Golik — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Krzysztof Golik — CC BY-SA 4.0
Every engineer or science lover — it's their personal Louvre; families worn down by art museums; and second-time Paris visitors seeking a major surprise without queues.
The original 1851 bob is here in the museum's church; the Panthéon's is a working replica at the site of the first public demonstration — in scientific honesty: this is the original, that is the theatre.
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The world's oldest science and technology museum (1794), and the most astonishing Paris museum for those who've never heard of it: Arts et Métiers keeps, in a former medieval priory, the original machines that built the modern world — Lavoisier's actual chemistry laboratory, the first bat-winged aircraft to attempt flight (Clément Ader's Avion), the earliest steam vehicles, Pascal's original calculating machines, and the models inventors deposited here for centuries to prove their priority. The theatrical finale is unmatched: the priory's Gothic church turned display hall, aeroplanes hanging from the vaults and automobiles climbing steel platforms, while in the nave swings the original Foucault pendulum — the very brass bob Foucault hung in 1851 — with the Earth-rotation demonstration explained hourly. Engineers, the curious and children over eight love it equally, and its crowds run far below its worth — one of the smartest queue-free choices in Paris.
Aircraft soaring beneath Gothic vaults and Foucault's original pendulum tracing the Earth's turn — Europe's strangest, finest display hall.
The instruments of modern chemistry's founder as his own hands used them, before the Revolution took his head — balances and retorts that made an entire science.
The steam bat that hopped off the ground in 1897, years before the Wrights — hanging on its velvet wings like a mythical beast.
Rue Réaumur, 75003 Paris