Madame de Sévigné, Lettres Parisiennes

Entry valid for 15 minutes, free visiting time.

Free for under 18s, jobseekers, and those receiving minimum social benefits. Important: reduced rates are only available at the museum's ticket counters. The museum is closed on Mondays, 25/12 and 01/

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Madame de Sévigné Parisian Letters Exhibition from 15 April to 23 August

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Designed with the support of a scientific committee composed of specialists in the work and the period, the exhibition is based on a renewed critical approach to the epistolary writer and brings together more than 200 works, paintings, objects, and drawings, from the museum's collections, important French public collections, and private collections.

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was born in Paris, Place Royale (now Place des Vosges) on 5 February

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From a family of ancient Burgundian nobility on her father's side, she was raised in Paris by her maternal grandparents, the Coulanges, who ensured she received an excellent education, rare for a young girl.

In 1644, she married Henri de Sévigné, a Breton gentleman, with whom she had two children: Françoise-Marguerite and Charles. Her husband's death, killed in a duel in 1651, left her a widow at twenty-five. Living between the Marais district in Paris and her lands at Les Rochers in Brittany, Madame de Sévigné participated in the most refined literary circles of the capital, including those of the Marquise de Rambouillet and Mademoiselle de Scudéry. She took part in the development of the gallant culture that flourished then as an art of living and influenced literature and the arts. The majority of Madame de Sévigné's preserved correspondence consists of letters sent to her daughter, who married the Comte de Grignan in 1669 and went to live in Provence. The published Correspondence today constitutes both a work that ranks among the classics of French literature and an essential document for understanding the history of ideas, customs, and events.