Museums Night in Hauts-de-Seine

Museums Night in Hauts-de-Seine: A Magical Evening in an Exceptional Department

Every year in May, the European Night of Museums invites the public to discover cultural heritage in a different light—literally. Museums and heritage sites, usually closed after 6 PM, open their doors in the evening and offer free visits, activities, and special events late into the night.

In Hauts-de-Seine, a department particularly well-endowed with museums and cultural sites, the Museums Night takes on an exceptional dimension. The 2025 edition was held on Saturday, May 17, 2025, and the 2026 edition on Saturday, May 23, 2026.

Participating Museums and Estates

Hauts-de-Seine offers a remarkably rich museum landscape, and the Museums Night allows you to appreciate it. Among the sites usually participating:

The Musée Départemental Albert-Kahn in Boulogne-Billancourt is one of the department's jewels. Built around the Archives de la Planète—a unique collection of 72,000 autochromes created between 1909 and 1931 across five continents—and its extraordinary gardens (Japanese garden, Vosges forest, forest meadow, French formal garden), it offers guided nocturnal tours and light shows in its gardens during the Museums Night.

The Domaine Départemental de Sceaux, with its neoclassical château, its Orangerie (housing the Musée de l'Île-de-France), and its 180 hectares of French formal gardens designed by André Le Nôtre, is ideally suited for nocturnal visits. The illuminated Orangerie, the grand perspectives of the park, and the shimmering ponds offer an unforgettable spectacle.

The Musée de la Carte à Jouer (Playing Card Museum) in Issy-les-Moulineaux is one of the most original museums in Hauts-de-Seine. Housed in a former town hall, it holds an exceptional collection of playing cards from around the world and offers themed activities and workshops on games and magic during the Museums Night.

The Maison de Chateaubriand in Châtenay-Malabry, the residence of François-René de Chateaubriand from 1807 to 1817, is open at night for theatrical or guided tours of the romantic writer's apartments.

The Cité de la Céramique — Sèvres, a national manufactory since the 18th century, offers tours of its workshops and porcelain collections during this event.

Original Nocturnal Activities

The Museums Night is an opportunity for each museum to offer out-of-the-ordinary activities: lantern tours, artistic performances, indoor concerts, film screenings, nocturnal workshops, tastings... These unique formats allow for a different relationship with the works and collections, in a nocturnal atmosphere that gives everything a special hue.

In 2025, the Musée de la Carte à Jouer offered a magical evening with close-up magic, children's workshops, and a staged tour of its collections. The Domaine de Sceaux organized a nocturnal stroll through the illuminated Le Nôtre gardens.

A National and European Event

The Museums Night is an initiative of the Ministry of Culture coordinated at the European level. It mobilizes several thousand museums across Europe each year. In France, the event is coordinated by the Ministry and implemented in each department. The participation of Hauts-de-Seine museums is consistently one of the most significant in Île-de-France, reflecting the density and quality of the department's museum network.