If was said we were going to visit a museum all about the economy, you might not be very excited. But if we told you we were going to visit a listed 19th century building owned by the Banque de France and inspired by the castles of the Loire valley, perhaps you’d be at least curious?

These two places – as you may have guessed – are in fact one – La Cité de l’économie, a fairly recent museum with a fun, modern presentation of exhibits in a spectacular building that has been meticulously renovated, with period gold leaf, sculpted wood (everywhere!), gorgeous tiles, stained glass windows, Italian marble and a giant safe room surrounded by a moat…

Trust us, this place is wild.

It’s pretty daring to open a whole museum about commerce and the economy, especially when you’re aiming to appeal to a young audience. The Cité de l’économie opened in spring 2019 (alas, not long before the first confinement) in a grand 19th-century townhouse called the Hôtel Gaillard, designed by architect Jules Février, as a space aiming to combine culture with information and explanation of how world trade works.

The concept might seem strange, but using the latest interactive methods in such a historic setting makes the experience particularly interesting.

From the outside, it’s not by chance that the building resembles a castle – the architect was inspired by several châteaux de la Loire, using a neo-Renaissance style that was deigned to complement the art collection of the owner, banker Émile Gaillard (amusingly, also one of Chopin’s most talented students). The townhouse took four years to finish (in 1882), but when Gaillard passed aways 20 years later, his bank was sold to another – the Crédit Lyonnais – and the building was finally bought by the Banque de France in 1912.

After some alteration, the venue became a branch of the bank, open to rich customers, and continued to be used as such until as late as 2006. Fast forward thirteen years, and after one project aiming to transform the place into a slavery museum, it became the Cité de l’économie.

Once inside, the sheer size of the place is slowly revealed, and the start of the visit takes you to the monumental staircase, where 3D-mapped high-definition projections give a hint of what to expect later. There are as many gorgeous details at ceiling height as at ground level, and this is just the start…

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The first rooms are fairly modest, but even these have ornate woodwork, huge fireplaces, handpainted wallpaper, stained-glass windows…

As you will soon see, these are the owner’s former living areas – the dining room, the lounges, even the bathroom!

These are almost the only ‘small’ rooms in the building. Very quickly, you arrive in the hall used to welcome clients of the bank, with a riveted metal structure for the ceiling and vast dimensions made to seem even bigger by the clever use of mirrors.

Here, you can either admire the building or start learning about stocks and shares and how business works, with illuminated presentations, touchscreens and other interactive devices…

The building’s main reception room is no less impressive, with several other smaller rooms leading off from it. All have huge windows and high ceilings, many wooden and ornately decorated. Don’t forget to look up!

Many more surprises are in store. For example, the next part of the visit takes you to a spiral staircase – the ‘well staircase’ – which stretches over three floors with an intricate wooden structure at the top and a sculpted stone doorway at the bottom.

However, the best is yet to come – the safe room, a large two-storey space with a majestic staircase and luxurious marble everywhere. The ceiling is one-metre thick concrete, the walls are in fact two walls of 25cm-thick reinforced concrete, there’s a 5-metre deep moat 1m25 wide surrounding the whole room, with just one door: 40cm of metal with a retractable drawbridge to keep everything secure.

This room is the last part of the visit and displays pieces from the collections of the Banque de France – mostly banknotes, coins and the machines used to manufacture them. Enlarged details of some notes show just how colourful and detailed they are.

It’s an impressive end to the museum’s presentation, and you can even have your photo printed onto a banknote here! A great, free souvenir (depending on how good you look that day…)

And that’s the end of the visit. Don’t forget to pop into the gift shop / bookshop on your way out…

We really enjoyed our time at the Cité de l’économie, a genuinely surprising and impressive place. It’s almost like visiting a castle without leaving Paris! Go check it out!

The Cité de l’économie (here) is open every day except Mondays from 2-6pm (7pm Saturdays)

Late-night opening from 6-11pm the first Thursday of each month, with special events and free entrance for all!

Admission: 12€ / 10€ / 9€ / 6€ / 0€ (details here)

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