The Nissim de Camondo Museum,
guest of honour at FAB Paris 2025

The Nissim de Camondo Museum is a reconstruction of an 18th-century aristocratic residence built from 1911 to 1914 by architect René Sergent and enhanced with a garden designed by Achille Duchêne along the edge of Parc Monceau, in Paris’s 8th arrondissement.

A passionate collector, Count Moïse de Camondo (1860-1935) assembled there an exceptional collection of 18th-century French woodwork, furniture, paintings, sculptures, carpets, tapestries, art objects, porcelain, and silverware of outstanding quality.

In memory of his son Nissim, who died for France in 1917, he decided to bequeath his life’s work to the State, which entrusted its management, according to his wishes, to the Arts Décoratifs.

One of a kind, the Nissim de Camondo Museum is much more than a museum.

It is a total work of art, whose setting, elegant in its design, largely inspired by the Petit Trianon of Versailles and innovative even in its domestic arrangements, matches the excellence of its contents – collections of prestigious provenance, renowned worldwide and expressing the quintessence of French decorative arts from the Age of Enlightenment.

It is a house inhabited by the memory of the splendor of a family, the Camondos, with their extraordinary, cosmopolitan, and philanthropic destiny, driven by the imperative to transmit and share a common heritage for the benefit of the many, whose tragic history, marked by both World Wars, grips and moves every visitor.

From the kitchens to the bathrooms, through the reception rooms and bedrooms, the tour immerses visitors in the daily life of Moïse de Camondo and his two children, Béatrice and Nissim, with their lifestyle typical of Belle Époque high society (fox hunting, yachting, passion for fast cars, gastronomy, stays at European luxury hotels, etc.) as described in In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, one of the Camondos’ distinguished guests.

Nearly 90 years after its public opening in 1936, the Nissim de Camondo Museum, its mansion, and its collections need restoration so that this exceptional heritage can continue to enchant visitors from around the world, today and tomorrow.

On the occasion of electrical and safety compliance work beginning in summer 2024, a selection of about sixty major artworks, chosen both for their representativeness and for the nature of planned conservation-restoration interventions, will be exceptionally presented to the public during the 2025 edition of FAB Paris, to mobilize the heritage community around the Camondo legacy.