Musée Picasso occupies Hôtel Salé, a seventeenth-century mansion whose rooms now hold an unusually broad record of Picasso’s work and creative process. The museum’s collection came together through donations and state acquisitions after the artist’s death.
Quick facts
Musée Picasso-Paris opened in 1985.
The collection was formed through donations from Picasso’s heirs and later additions.
It includes paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, films, and archives.
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The Musée Picasso occupies the Hôtel Salé, a grand seventeenth-century mansion in Paris’s Marais. Its name means “salted” or “salty,” a reminder of the source of its first owner’s fortune. Pierre Aubert de Fontenay collected the royal salt tax, known as the gabelle, and commissioned architect Jean Boullier to build his residence on newly developing land. Work began in 1656 and was finished at the end of 1659.
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