The temporary exhibition is accessible with all admission tickets.
Square and compasses engraved on monuments, hidden symbols on the pediments of public buildings, secret imprints in the layout of streets… The Masonic presence in Paris feeds the fantasies of strollers. The reality is quite different, more fascinating and unexpected.
For although French Freemasonry was born in Paris around 1725 in the bucolic Faubourg Saint-Germain, its imprint on the capital is to be sought less in imagined signs than in the concrete initiatives of the men who populated the lodges. Bartholdi, father of the Statue of Liberty. Gossec, Méhul and Cherubini, founders of the Conservatoire. Vivant Denon, first director of the Louvre, when the very idea of the great Parisian museums had matured in the lodges. Antoine Denis Chaudet, imperial sculptor and alchemical interpreter of Notre-Dame. Eugène Milon, true builder of the Eiffel Tower. Alphonse Mucha, whose posters and decorations adorned the streets of the Belle Époque. Not to mention some adventurers, such as Casanova – inventor of the national lottery – and Cagliostro, pre-revolutionary mage, who fed popular culture.