The 1900 bicycle carousel
You pedal with your fellow riders and leg-power alone spins the ride — Paris's funniest minutes of collective laughter.
Pavillons de Bercy · Musée des Arts Forains — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Moonik — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Pavillons de Bercy · Musée des Arts Forains — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Pavillons de Bercy · Musée des Arts Forains — CC BY-SA 4.0
Clearly yes: the pieces speak a universal language, the rides need no translation, and guides summarise in English for mixed groups — one of those rarities language cannot withhold.
Literally four to a hundred — little ones for rides and lights, elders for pure distilled nostalgia; Paris's most reliable all-family outing whenever booking allows.
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In the old Bercy wine warehouses hides the most magical and least famous of Paris museums: the Musée des Arts Forains, a private collection of funfair wonders from 1850 to 1950 — wooden carousels running in full splendour, Belle Époque game booths, a Venetian salon of music and automata — assembled by actor and antiques lover Jean-Paul Favand and turned into a world operated as it was born. Its double singularity: entry is by pre-booked guided tour only (mostly French with English summaries), and the guides are storytellers who set the pieces running before you — indeed you yourself ride the horse carousel and the 1900 bicycle merry-go-round and try the game booths; a museum touched and lived, not watched. All of which is why Parisians adore it for birthdays and occasions, and why its pavilions become an open festival at New Year — book days ahead at least, and hesitate for no family with children or elders reclaiming their childhood.
You pedal with your fellow riders and leg-power alone spins the ride — Paris's funniest minutes of collective laughter.
Gondolas, automata and a miniature opera run before you with their music — an entire era's theatre preserved beating, not embalmed.
The mechanical horse race and the waiter-toppling ball throw — actually played, by original rules, with the fervour of a century past.
Pavillons de Bercy, near Bercy Village, 75012 Paris