She never published during her lifetime. She wrote for her daughter. And yet, four centuries later,, everyone still reads her.

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of her birth,, the Carnavalet Museum is dedicating a major exhibition to Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné – a Parisian born in the Place Royale, widowed at twenty-five, a brilliant writer and insatiable observer of a century in full ferment. She is often reduced to a “letter writer.” This overlooks the fact that her letters are an open-air theater.

She chronicles court intrigues, scandals, public executions, mourning, thwarted love, fashions, and rumors. Above all, she invents a tone: rapid, ironic, vibrant. A language that captures the world in the present. The Carnavalet Museum has chosen to reinstall herin the heart of her natural setting: Paris.

More than 200 works – portraits, manuscripts, objects, drawings – recreate the city she traverses and comments on. The Place des Vosges, the private mansions of the Marais, the salons where news and witty remarks circulate. The exhibition brings to life a free, cultured woman, a strategist of her own independence in a world governed by men. Widowed at a young age, a devoted mother, and a close friend of La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Sévigné transformed her separation from her daughter, who had settled in Provence, into a monumental work. Writing became a way to maintain the connection, to ward off absence, to inhabit time. Her letters resemble our messages today: urgent, precise, and raw. Except that at her place, everything becomes literature.

CARNAVALET MUSEUM - HISTORY OF PARIS
From April 15 to August 23, 2026
23 rue Madame de Sévigné, 75003
Metro Saint-Paul (Line 1)
Tue. to Sun. 10:00 AM - 5:45 PM
Closed on Mon.
Price: €15 - Reduced rate: €13 - Free for under 18s