Museum of Art and History of Judaism, located in the Marais, which has long been settled Parisian Jews, in an old mansion of Saint-Aignan.

The building of the XVII century was named after its second owner, the Duc de Saint-Aignan. In XX century the mansion was purchased by the city and restored. The idea is to place the Museum of Art and History of Judaism strongly supported then Mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac. He opened the museum in 1998, when he was president of France.

The original exhibition was created from the private collection of the Museum of Jewish Art and the Strauss-Rothschild Collection Museum of Cluny. These added items received from American Jewish Restitution Organization - she sought out the Nazis plundered Jewish cultural values ​​around the world. The collection is enriched at the expense of the funds of the Louvre, the Pompidou Centre, the Orsay Museum and the Carnavalet, the Jewish Museum of Prague. The whole family archive - more than three thousand documents - presented the grandson of Captain Dreyfus, was accused in 1894 of spying for Germany and then acquitted. "The Dreyfus Affair" split the society and has had a tremendous impact on the history of France and Europe at the turn of the century.

The first thing the visitor sees, coming to the museum - a monument by sculptor Alfred Dreyfus Louis Mitelberga. The captain is stretched out like a string, holding in his hand a piece of raised sabers (during public demoted Dreyfus personal weapons officer on the broken knee).

The stands of the museum you can see a bronze Hanukkah lamp XIV century, stone bowl for Purim 1319, a tombstone from Jewish cemetery in Paris in 1281. There are many Torah scrolls, unique jewelry, household items from various Jewish communities across Europe. Rich pictorial collection of the museum. The main place is given to the canvas of Marc Chagall "The gate of the Jewish cemetery," written in Vitebsk in 1917 (it is believed that the artist depicted the gates of the old-Ulanovichskogo cemetery where his parents are buried). Widely it presents works by Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Nathan Altman. In the sculpture - works Ossip Zadkine, Jacques Lipchitz, Hannah Orlova.

Detailed exposition tells about the history of the Jewish communities in France, Europe, North Africa, from the Middle Ages to the present day. The collection - one of the world's largest collections of Jewish cultural values.

Rounding the house, the visitor enters the garden of Anne Frank. There grows a young chestnut Anna - a Jewish girl who died in Auschwitz. It is grown from the process tree on whose branches little girl watched from his hiding - until she herself and her family are not grabbed by the Gestapo.