Resplendence of things past: museum of Paris revels in £50m revamp

The Carnavalet, devoted to the city's history, has been shaken out of its dusty and confusing former shape

One of the first cities in Europe to award itself a museum devoted to its own history, Paris will soon have one of the continent's most modern as the Musee Carnavalet reopens this month following a spectacular five-year, 58m (50m) renovation.

Opened in 1880 at the suggestion of Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann, who realised 20 years earlier that the mammoth programme of urban renewal he was carrying out would obliterate much of the city's past, the museum had not been overhauled since.