Museums in Paris: Musée de la Préfecture de Police

The Musée de la Préfecture de Police is dedicated to the history of the Paris police over the centuries.  

The museum, located in a police precinct building in the 5th arrondissement, has artifacts from the 1700's to the recent past, including gruesome stories of crime and punishment.  It has some truly macabre exhibits, so be forewarned.

The museum was recommended to us because it has a unique artifact.  More about that later.

Let's take a photographic tour of the museum.

Haut les mains! (Hands up!)

Marie-Chantal enjoyed from stylish fashions from the past.

Below are two documents from the period of the French Revolution:  

• left, an arrest warrant for "David", the famed painter Jacques-Louis David.  David was an ardent revolutionary.  As the Reign of Terror ended, he was arrested and imprisoned for a year, before being released to resume painting.    
• right, an order for surveillance on Rue des Mathurins in Paris.  (Our friends Eliane and Jean-Charles lived on Rue des Mathurins.  We never suspected the street was a hotbed of anti-revolutionary sentiment.)

The museum has various artifacts, including an ancient prison door and a police call box from the 1940's.   

The museum recounts many significant events from the history of Paris.  One event is the German Occupation of Paris during WWII.  During the Occupation, many Parisians and others were arrested, tortured and executed.  Below is one of the posts used for execution by firing squad.  

The museum also recounts the many assassination plots involving kings and other important people.  One event was the July 1835 assassination plot against Louis-Philippe I, King of the French during the 1830's-1840's.  The assassin created a device with multiple gun barrels mounted in a stand.  The device would shoot from inside a building as the king and his entourage passed by in carriages.  

A replica of the device dubbed the "infernal machine"

The effort to kill the king failed.  The king was only grazed by a bullet.  However, the device succeeded in killing many people in the king's entourage.  The assassin was also maimed by his own device when some of the barrels exploded.  He was quickly arrested and tried and executed.    

Below is an actual executioner's sword, an épée de justice, from the 1600's.

Another device for execution appears below, a 1/3 scale model of a French guillotine, named for Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a Parisian doctor who, in 1789 at the start of the Revolution, advocated for speedy execution by guillotine in place of slow death by painful torture on the breaking wheel or by some other method.  During a Left Bank walking tour, we visited Dr. Guillotin's house in the 6th arrondissement.  Our guide explained that the neighbors objected to Dr. Guillotin experimenting with a guillotine to kill farm animals in the backyard.  The blood would run into the alley behind the house.

So, what is the unique artifact in the musuem?  Below is an actual blade from the guillotine that once stood in the Place de Greve in front of city hall.  The steel blade weighs nearly 20 pounds.  During the Revolution, the Place de Greve guillotine was used for many executions.  

Thanks for visiting the Musée de la Préfecture de Police with us.