Browse Notre-Dame, the cathedral's medieval manuscript exhibition at the Musée de Cluny

While Notre-Dame Cathedral is best known for its beauty and magnificent ornaments and stonework, on display in an exhibition at the Musée de Cluny, it was also home to genuine intellectual treasures, including books, manuscripts and printed matter used for worship or study, also on show from November 19, 2024 to March 16, 2025. The Bibliothèque nationale de France has provided 30 of the 40 works on display, having preserved most of the building's medieval manuscripts since 1756.

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A very small part of this exceptional collection of almost 300 manuscripts, the only one of its kind in the world, is open to the public on the second floor of the museum, offering a condensed view of the rich intellectual, artistic and religious life of Notre-Dame de Paris in the Middle Ages, focusing on the themes of library management, study books, religious witnesses and the fate of the medieval library.

The Notre-Dame library was one of the first "public" libraries in Paris, with books for study alongside biblical and liturgical works and luxurious copies. An opportunity to better understand how this library works, and to admire rare writings such as a Missal from around 1400, a 16th-century Ritual, the Histoire des Francs by Grégoire de Tours, a Carolingian gospel book from Reims, and the oldest witness to Christine de Pisan's Cité des Dames.

Making stones speak, the exhibition on Notre-Dame's medieval sculptures at the Musée de Cluny
To mark the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, the Musée du Moyen-Âge is presenting an exhibition based on its sculpted decor and the stones recovered, providing an opportunity to imagine the monument in medieval times, from November 19, 2024 to March 16, 2025. [Read more]