Musée de l'Homme (Museum of Mankind), Paris

The Musée de l'Homme (Museum of Mankind) is a museum of human evolution and human societies in the Passy wing of the Palais de Chaillot, 17 Place du Trocadéro, in Paris's 16th arrondissement, run by France's National Museum of Natural History. Full-price tickets cost €15 in 2026. It suits visitors interested in prehistory, anthropology and the human impact on the planet, and its terrace faces the Eiffel Tower.

Founded by Paul Rivet for the 1937 exhibition

The ethnologist Paul Rivet established the museum in 1937 for the International Exhibition held in Paris that year, taking over the collections of the Trocadéro ethnography museum, whose building had been demolished. It was inaugurated in June 1938.

During the German occupation, several members of the museum, including Rivet, formed one of the first resistance groups in Paris, the Musée de l'Homme network. Many of its members were arrested and deported.

In the 2000s most of the ethnographic collections moved to the new Musée du quai Branly. The Musée de l'Homme closed for six years of work and reopened on 17 October 2015, refocused on Rivet's idea of a laboratory museum that combines research and public display.

1,800 objects on human evolution and cultures

The permanent display covers about 2,500 square metres and presents some 1,800 objects around three questions: who are we, where do we come from and where are we going. The route covers human evolution, the diversity of human bodies, languages and cultures, and the impact of societies on the environment. Highlights include a Cro-Magnon skull, prehistoric Venus figurines, human fossils and casts, a crystal skull and the skull attributed to René Descartes.

Les grands âges and the 2009 to 2015 renovation

Les grands âges, a photographic exhibition on old age by Nikos Aliagas with the biodemographer Samuel Pavard, runs from 2 September 2026 to 3 January 2027; the €15 ticket covers it and the permanent galleries. The 2009 to 2015 renovation cost a reported €52 million. The museum has also returned human remains from its collections: the skulls of 24 Algerian fighters in 2020, and in March 2025 President Macron committed to returning three Sakalava skulls to Madagascar.