Address:
18 rue Antoine Bourdelle
Paris 15th district
Open except Mondays and holidays 10 a.m.>6 p.m.
Full entry: €4.50; youth: €2.20; under 14: free.
Metro stations: Montparnasse, Falguière.

Just around the corner is the diminutive Musée du Monparnasse recalling such Roaring-‘20s Montparnasse denizens as Hemingway, Picasso and Modigliani. It opened its doors in 1998 in a quaint paved street (Chemin du Montparnasse) which itself is worth the visit.

The museum offers its visitors a treasure trove of photographs taken by such luminaries as Robert Doisneau and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and many watercolours and prints by Montparnasse artists.

Address:
21 avenue du Maine
Paris 15th district
Open except Mondays and holidays 12:30 a.m.>7 p.m.
Full entry: €5; reduced: €4;
under 12: free;
Metro station: Montparnasse

Still closer to the Gare Montparnasse is the Musée de la Poste, an offshoot of the postal administration - and a good place to take the prettiest mail-woman in your neighborhood.

Opened in 1973, it’s a museographical surprise: you take an elevator to floor five then spiral down, room-to-room, to the ground floor.

Goodies along the way include: an articulated-arm Chappe semaphore (ca. 1800), part of a France-wide network enabling messages to come 10 km. station-to-station in clear weather from, say, Calais to Paris in just over an hour until France imported Samuel Morse’s system in 1856; a lovely 1900 ceramic post office counter; and an explanation of Paris pneumatique system that, 1866>1984, air-propelled correspondence via underground tubes at a speed of up to 700 meters a minute.

Address:
34 boulevard Vaugirard
Paris 15th district
Open except Mondays and holidays 10 a.m.>6 p.m.
Full entry: €5; reduced: €3.50;
under 18 and mailmen/women: free;
Metro station: Montparnasse.

And now, for gruesomely comic (?) relief : Paris’ Crime Museum a.k.a. Musée des Collections Historiques de la Préfecture de Police.