A palm-sized café
Whole Lyon rooms miniaturised to eye-breaking precision.
Arnaud 25 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Elliott Brown from Birmingham, United Kingdom — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Benoît Prieur — CC0 · Benoît Prieur — CC0
Among Lyon's most child-successful museums outright: miniatures are a giant game inverted, and the cinema floors mean monsters and creatures (some aesthetically scary — judge very small ones on the effects floor). Above six, guaranteed success.
Süskind's novel had its eighteenth-century Paris scenes filmed here in Vieux Lyon — the quarter most faithfully preserved from that age — with the Maison des Avocats itself on screen. The museum later bought the production pieces, making their display at the shooting site a rare closed circle.
Miniatures while the eye is fresh: their precision needs unspent staring. Then the effects, lighter in rhythm and louder in wonder — an order that climbs rather than descends.
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In one of Vieux Lyon's finest houses — the Renaissance Maison des Avocats — live two enchanting museums on one ticket: floors of miniatures and floors of cinema's tricks, together among France's most successful private museums. The miniatures are by the house artist Dan Ohlmann and world masters: complete rooms and streets scaled down to the edge of deception — a Lyon café with tired chairs, a barber's mirrors — details demanding a stare to believe they are palm-sized. The cinema floors hold real treasures: models, creatures and effects bought from major studios — including mechanisms from 'Perfume', scenes of which were shot in this very building — a living lesson in how illusions were made before digits and after.
Whole Lyon rooms miniaturised to eye-breaking precision.
Original creatures and effects from major films — illusion held in hand.
The pink Renaissance courtyard is worth the ticket itself.
60 Rue Saint-Jean, 69005 Lyon