But it goes on the list for our next trip to Paris since we’re all over the the smaller “second tier” museums which are hidden all over the city.
Boarded up for renovations for five long years, the Museum of the Legion of Honor in Paris has opened again. It faces the Musee D’Orsay on the Left Bank and occupies a wing of one of the city’s finest palaces, the Hotel de Salm, completed in 1788 and much admired by Thomas Jefferson.
The museum first opened in 1925 to showcase French national decorations such as the royal orders of St. Michel, founded in 1469, and especially the Legion of Honor, created by Napoleon in 1802.
Visiting the renovated museum gives visitors a chance to peek into the exquisite, neoclassical Hotel de Salm. Its galleries explain why orders of merit came into being and identify recipients such as Thomas Wiltberger Evans, dentist of Napoleon III, and Maurice Floquet, France’s oldest surviving veteran of World War I (who died in 2006).
[From Paris Museum of the Legion of Honor reopens – Travel – LATimes.com ]
