Museum of the Prefecture of Police of Paris is where it supposed to be - in the police station 5 district of the capital, on the third floor. The building is gloomy, yet the police station. But the museum pays all the aesthetic inconvenience.

The history of the museum began in 1900 at the Paris World Exhibition - there was an exhibition of documents and material evidence presented by the police prefecture. Nine years later, Prefect of Police Louis Lepine decided to set up on the basis of a temporary exhibition permanent museum. Its main theme - the fight against crime in France since the XVII century to the end of the Second World War. But there is also quite modern exhibits.

History of the French police is curious and instructive. Napoleon came to power, found a complete incapacity of the police: on the roads of the country could not move because of the gangs of robbers. Emperor suppressed banditry stringent measures. He created the prefecture of police, he was put in charge of the unscrupulous, but also the most effective minister - Fouche, who served all regimes in a row.

In the future, the fight against crime was in France with as non-standard methods. In 1811, the prefecture was a felon who had escaped from prison Vidocq and offered his services. In the museum, you can learn how to Vidocq formed a special team of former criminals - so was born the French Surete criminal police.

A separate exposition tells about the birth of the first effective method of identification, proposed a simple clerk Prefecture Alphonse Bertillon. It is now computer banks have fingerprints and genetic examination, and in the XIX century to identify the person to name another name, it was incredibly difficult. Bertillon invented a system of measurement and comparison of the different parameters of the human body - height, length and volume of the head, the length of the fingers and feet. February 20, 1883, he discovered that the prisoner, who identified himself as Dupont, is in fact a criminal by the name of Martin. Since Bertillon first introduced in forensic scientific methods and a system called by its name - bertilonazh. It was used throughout the world, have not yet learned to collate fingerprints.

The stands of the museum includes weapons and uniforms of police, gun crimes, and even a real guillotine, where the French were executed criminals. Entrance to the museum - free.