Musée de l’Armée

Located in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, the Musée de l’Armée is a national military museum within the Hôtel des Invalides complex. Established in 1905, it houses one of the world’s richest military history collections, spanning from the Bronze Age to the 21st century. Visitors can explore ancient arms and armor, artifacts from the reigns of Louis XIV to Napoleon III, and exhibits on the World Wars. The museum’s centerpiece is the Dôme des Invalides, which contains the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte. The site also includes the Cathedral of Saint-Louis-des-Invalides, adorned with military trophies, and the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, showcasing detailed models of fortified cities. The museum offers guided tours, educational workshops, and hosts various events throughout the year.

Planning your visit

The Musée de l'Armée occupies the Hôtel des Invalides, built by Louis XIV as a hospital and home for wounded soldiers, and it holds one of the richest military collections in the world — Bronze Age weapons through to the twenty-first century, across arms and armour, the campaigns of Louis XIV and Napoleon, and both world wars. The medieval and Renaissance armoury is outstanding, with royal parade armour of a quality closer to sculpture than equipment.

The centrepiece is the Dôme, gilded and visible across Paris, where Napoleon's tomb sits in an open circular crypt: six nested coffins inside a red quartzite sarcophagus on a green granite base, surrounded by reliefs of his achievements, positioned so that visitors must look down at the emperor — a detail the architect intended to reverse when he realised. The Cathedral of Saint-Louis-des-Invalides adjoins it, hung with captured colours.

Also on site, and often missed, is the Musée des Plans-Reliefs: enormous seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scale models of fortified French cities, built for military planning and extraordinary as objects.

Bookable options include skip-the-line private tours, four-hour Napoleon-focused tours covering the tomb and the Empire collections, and combination tickets pairing the museum with a Seine cruise. Current availability is listed below.