Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Meudon
Tucked behind a garden wall on the Route des Gardes, this compact municipal museum occupies the Villa des Brillants — the country house where Auguste Rodin spent the final years of his life and is now buried alongside his partner Rose Beuret. It is quieter, more intimate and more moving than the famous Rodin Museum in Paris.
Rodin's Retreat
Rodin bought the dilapidated 17th-century villa in 1895 and had a full-scale plaster cast of the Gates of Hell installed in front of it — a ghostly, monumental presence that still greets visitors today in the garden.
Inside the villa, period furniture, personal photographs and working plaster models show the sculptor as a private man rather than a public monument. The light in the upstairs rooms, filtering through old lace curtains, has barely changed since he died here in 1917.
The Garden and the Graves
Rodin and Rose Beuret are buried beneath a bronze cast of The Thinker in the sloping garden — a pilgrimage spot for art lovers that feels genuinely tender rather than touristic.
The museum also covers Meudon's broader history, including its role in early aviation: Clément Ader made his famous steam-powered flight attempts nearby in 1897, and a section of the permanent collection documents that chapter with original photographs and technical drawings.
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