Musée de la Figurine Historique
Hidden in plain sight in the Hôtel de Ville building on Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, this wonderfully eccentric museum houses one of the largest collections of historical miniature figures in the world — over 100,000 hand-painted tin soldiers, dioramas and scale battle scenes spanning antiquity to the 20th century. It is gloriously niche, meticulously curated and almost entirely ignored by the guide
Inside the Collection
The centrepiece is a series of enormous dioramas depicting Napoleonic battles — Austerlitz, Waterloo, Wagram — with tens of thousands of 30mm figures arranged with obsessive topographical accuracy on sculpted terrain. You can spend 20 minutes just finding the generals.
Beyond the Napoleonic rooms, cases display Roman legions, medieval knights, WWI poilus in their horizon-blue coats and colonial-era cavalry, all hand-painted to a standard that makes the craft genuinely impressive rather than merely nostalgic.
The museum was founded in 1931 by local collector Louis Siret and has been growing ever since; the volunteer guides are passionate enthusiasts who will happily spend an hour explaining the difference between a cuirassier and a dragoon if you show the slightest interest.
Why It's Worth Your Time
Even visitors with zero interest in military history tend to be won over by the sheer craftsmanship and the strange beauty of thousands of tiny painted faces frozen mid-charge. It is also a fascinating document of how different eras imagined and romanticised warfare.
The museum is particularly good with children aged 8–14 who are allowed to use magnifying glasses provided at the entrance to examine individual figures up close — a rare and generous touch.
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