Art & History Museum — Armande Béjart's house
Three centuries of Meudon in one house, and a rare collection of the post-war School of Paris that almost nobody comes to see.
Photo : Franck Devedjian
- Address
- 11 rue des Pierres, 92190 Meudon
- Phone
- +33 1 46 23 87 13
- Website
- musee.meudon.fr
- Opening hours
- Tuesday to Sunday, 14:00–18:00 (last entry 17:30). Closed Mondays, public holidays, and for a few weeks in August.
- Admission
- Free entry to the permanent collections. Guided tour €8 adult, €6 child up to 16.
- Getting there
- Meudon Val Fleury (RER C), ten minutes on foot. Or Line N to Meudon or Bellevue. Bus 169, 289, 389 or 162 to “Église de Meudon”.
The house
The building dates from the sixteenth century. It was bought around 1550 by Ambroise Paré, surgeon to the kings of France and one of the founders of modern surgery. In the 1670s it became the country house of Armande Béjart, the actress and widow of Molière, who lived here until her death in 1700.
A note on a common mistake: Molière himself never lived in Meudon. He died in 1673, before his widow acquired the house.
The town bought the building in 1941 and opened it as a museum on 10 July 1943. It has been listed as a historic monument since 1891 and holds the French “Musée de France” label.
The collections
Three strands. The history of Meudon — the Grand Dauphin, Madame de Pompadour, Rodin. French landscape painting from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, from neoclassicism through Barbizon to impressionism and symbolism. And an unusually strong holding of the Nouvelle École de Paris, the abstract painters and sculptors working between 1940 and 1980, many of whom lived in or near Meudon.
There is also a sculpture garden, which most visitors miss entirely.