Les Pavillons de Bercy - Musée des Arts Forains

Inside the stone wine warehouses of Bercy, the usual museum rules of "do not touch" don't apply. This is a collection of fairground art and curiosity cabinets where preservation happens through use. You don't wander freely here – visits are conducted as guided tours, turning the experience into something closer to a performance than a gallery walk. The guides act as operators, switching on the massive organs and inviting the group to test the rides. The collection belongs to Jean-Paul Favand, spanning the 19th and 20th centuries across four themed areas. The atmosphere is deliberately dim, lit by the warm glow of thousands of incandescent bulbs reflecting off mirrors and polished wood. The most distinct feature is the Manège de Vélocipèdes, a bicycle carousel from 1897. Visitors actually climb onto the antique saddles and pedal to generate the speed – it requires legitimate physical effort to get the thing moving – while others compete at mechanical racecourse games. Because the venue often functions as a private event space, access requires planning. You enter either through those pre-booked tours or during specific seasonal openings like the Festival du Merveilleux in December. When the machines are running, the space fills with the loud, mechanical music of fairground organs, drowning out the quiet typically associated with looking at antiques.