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Origin and history

The Légion d'honneur museum is a French national museum dedicated to orders of chivalry, decorations and medals, both French and foreign. Located in the Hotel de Salm, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, it was created in 1925 on the initiative of General Dubail, Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour. Its funding was secured through an open subscription among the legionnaires and military medallists, with notable success in the United States. The museum was inaugurated in 1925, and its initial collections come from the funds of the Grand Chancellery and the national museums, enriched by donations from collectors and foreign states.

The museum occupies a modern wing built between 1922 and 1925, on the site of the former stables of the Salm hotel. Its permanent collections are organized into thematic areas: history of the palace and museum, chivalry and religious orders, French royal orders, Legion of Honour and souvenirs of the First Empire, foreign orders, and French decorations from 1789 to the present day. It is the only museum in the world entirely dedicated to phaleristics, studying decorations and medals.

The museum regularly organizes large-scale temporary exhibitions, often accompanied by scientific publications. Among the notable exhibitions are Napoleon and the Legion of Honour (1968), Napoleon's sedan (2012), and De Gaulle and Merit (2014), which commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the National Order of Merit. Since 2008, the Spada collection, one of the largest private collections of order and decoration in the world, has strengthened its international reach.

The hotel of Salm, where the museum is located, was built in 1787 by architect Pierre Rousseau for Prince Frédéric de Salm-Kyrbourg, guillotined in 1794. The palace was acquired in 1804 by Napoleon I to install the Legion of Honour. The museum, completely renovated in 2006, now offers an interactive journey tracing the history of French decorations for a thousand years, as well as the current functioning of national orders.

The Society of Friends of the Museum, founded in 1970 and recognized as a public utility, actively contributes to the enrichment of collections and the dissemination of knowledge. It has been publishing a newsletter since 1990 and organizing special issues, thus strengthening the link between the museum and the public. The museum is also labeled Musée de France and is an essential reference for researchers and amateurs of military and decorative history.

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