Hôtel Carnavalet

Look at the facade in front of you. What you're seeing is one of the last surviving Renaissance buildings in Paris, a genuine rarity in a city that tore down most of its past to build grand boulevards. The only comparable example is the Cour Carrée at the Louvre, which makes sense, because the same architects built both. They finished this one in 1548, then got called away to work on the Louvre shortly after.

Now, about that name. "Carnavalet" sounds elegant and deliberately French, but it's actually a mangled version of "Kernevenoy," a Breton nobleman whose widow bought the building in 1572. Nobody could spell his name properly, the garbled version stuck, and here we are five centuries later still using it.

The museum itself has a turbulent past. It was Baron Haussmann, the man responsible for demolishing medieval Paris to build those wide boulevards, who bought this building in 1866. His stated goal was to preserve the memories of the city he was busy destroying. The first collection never even made it to opening day. During the fires of 1871, it burned entirely. Inside, you can still see the charred door of the original Hôtel de Ville. A small, scorched reminder of everything that was lost.