Grande Galerie de l’Evolution

36 Rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 5th,M° Jussieu
Paris
IIe-de-France
France
01 40 79 30 00,

http://www.mnhn.fr/Evolution

Type: Museum
Addmission Fee: Entry Euro 7, Euro 5 for students under 26, free for kids under age four.
Hours: Open daily except Tuesday, 10am to 6pm.

Comments ( 0 )
Rating (0 Votes)

The 19th-century buildings of the National Museum of Natural History serve as an elegant backdrop to the gardens. The Grande Galerie de l’Evolution is the most impressive, both for its well-presented educational content on the evolution of the natural world and its theatrical Jules Verne décor. The 1994 renovations modernized the museum with a completely open floor plan and interactive computer exhibits while preserving the original wrought iron and glass ceiling, wooden floors and stone walls. The low lighting and life-size animal reproductions, from insects and birds to lions and even a prehistoric whale fossil suspended from the ceiling, give the place a magical energy. Start at the top floor where you can get the best view of the museum’s architecture, and don’t miss the extinct and endangered species gallery on the second floor. Almost everything is in French, but there are English text sheets around the museum in the wooden boxes labeled “Fiches de Lecture.” One exhibit features a tigress attacking the carrier basket on an elephant. In 1887 the Duke of Orléans was on safari riding in that basket when the tigress attacked, and got away only because the basket broke under the animal’s weight. It was then hunted down, shot, and brought it back to Paris to be stuffed (and later donated to the museum). Make what you want of that evolutionary lesson. If dinosaur fossils are more to your taste, the Galeries de Paléontologie & Anatomie Comparée exhibit mammoths, Louis XV’s rhinoceros, dinosaurs and austral whales.