The Carnavalet museum has about 10,000 art and historical objects.
The objets d’art department has a considerable ceramics collection (including unique earthenware popular during the revolutionary period), boxes and snuffboxes (18th and 19th centuries), fans (18th-20th centuries), buttons (18th century), watches, etc. The singularity, and charm, of this collection is also due to the large number of objects that once belonged to relatively illustrious characters who left their mark on the history of Paris or history in general. Robespierre’s shaving dish, Victorien Sardou’s eyeglasses, Zola’s watch and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s inkwell are all on display. A wide variety of influential people - Madame de Sévigné, Voltaire, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and the dauphine, Dumas, Lamartine, Bérenger, Anna de Noailles, Proust, Léautaud, Michelet, Marat, Colette, etc. – are also evoked through familiar objects.
Vase à sujet allégorique : La France gardant la Constitution
Epée du comte de Paris
Carosse du duc de Bordeaux
Louis XVI remettant à Benjamin Franklin les traités signés entre la France et les États-Unis, le 6 février 1778
Tête-à-tête décoré de vues de Paris
Nécessaire de campagne de l'empereur Napoléon Ier
Chronomètre offert par les horlogers de la Chaux-de-Fonds à Emile Zola (1840-1902)
Assiette au ballon