Footsteps of WWII · Paris, Champagne & Alsace
Musée de la Libération de Paris – Leclerc – Jean Moulin
Museum · 19–25 Aug 1944
The story
The museum opened on 25 August 2019, the 75th anniversary of the Liberation, in the 18th-century Ledoux pavilions on Place Denfert-Rochereau. It brings together collections on General Philippe Leclerc, whose French 2nd Armoured Division entered Paris on 24–25 August 1944, and on Jean Moulin, de Gaulle's envoy who unified the Resistance and died after his arrest in 1943. Beneath the building is the underground command post of Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, commander of the Paris-region FFI, from which the uprising of 19–25 August 1944 was directed.
What to look for
Exhibition rooms on occupation, resistance and liberation, with Leclerc and Moulin material, then a descent of about a hundred steps to Rol-Tanguy's command post, a concrete civil-defence shelter with its original telephones and fittings.
Plan your visit
Not verified in October 2026 (official site unreachable). The permanent collection has been free and the museum closed on Mondays; the command-post visit is by timed slot. Check the website before you go.
Things change, so check opening times before you travel.
Nearby sites
- Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris · 3 km
- Mont-Valérien memorial, Suresnes · 10 km
- Glade of the Armistice, Compiègne · 78 km
All 160 sites in Footsteps of WWII →
Footsteps of WWII: Europe 1939–1945
A free field guide for your phone: the route, the maps and the stories built in, even with no signal. The whole Second World War in Europe, from the first shots at Westerplatte on 1 September 1939 to the German surrender in May 1945: Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, Normandy, Arnhem, Bastogne, Stalingrad, Berlin and the camps, in 15 areas from Britain to Russia.
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