A Revolutionary Museum Alexandre Lenoir's Museum of French Monuments

Dating from 1795, the Museum of French Monuments was France's second national museum, coming in the wake of the Louvre, founded in 1793. It played a major part in the birth of the notion of heritage and the emergence of medieval history. However, it was closed in 1816 and its contents are currently to be found in institutions in France-the Louvre's Department of Sculptures, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the basilica of Saint-Denis, the Musée de Cluny, Notre Dame, various churches in the Paris diocese-and abroad: mainly in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but also in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
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