An Eye Prefer Paris Tour client of mine a few months back who was a dermatologist, enthusiastically recommended visiting Le Musee des Moulages, a museum of dermatology. She said it housed an extensive collection of reproductions of body parts showing skin diseases in full color. Intrigued for months, I finally got around to visiting the museum a few weeks ago.

I entered the 2-story building that looked like a house and the ground floor had a series of plaques and busts commemorating important doctors & professors. When I went upstairs, the woman in the office unlocked the door to a large musty two -story room with rows and rows of dark wood vitrines. The vitrines were filled with wax body parts covered with acne, psoriasis, syphilis and a host of other hideous skin diseases.

All at once I was repulsed, fascinated and creeped out. In one way there was a beauty to the attention to detail of the texture and color of the replicated body parts. Close-ups of lifelike hands, feet, tongues, cheeks, fetuses, baby’s limbs, noses, necks, and eyelids all ravaged by redness, bumps, rashes, etc. fascinated me. It was like Madame Tussaud’s gone to hell. Is this a Damien Hirst installation waiting to happen?

The founder of the museum, Charles Lailler, discovered 30-year-old artist Jules Baretta who originally made realistic cardboard fruit. From 1878 to 1899 Jules Baretta produced over 1800 pieces. Baretta died in 1924 and Louis Nicket took over and produced an additional 480 moulages.

I recommend seeing the museum only if you have a strong stomach and like the weird and very obscure.

Musee des Moulages
Hopital Saint-Louis
1 avenue Claude Vellefaux, 75010

Open only by appointment
Call 01.42.49.99.15
Email francoise.Durand@sls.aphp.fr
Open Monday to Friday 9AM to 4:45PM
Admission 4 euros
Metro: Goncourt, Republique, Jacques Bonsargent

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com