Richelieu · level 1

Notice how a mirror can extend a room, or how gold decoration catches your eye before you have taken in the walls around it. In Richelieu’s decorative arts galleries, the things people lived with can reveal the effect they wanted to make on one another. The Napoleon III Apartments give that idea a large and elaborate setting. Prepared in 1861 for the Minister of State under Napoleon III, the French emperor, they served a world of receptions and official display. Velvet, chandeliers, painted decoration and reflected light work together. The rooms help you imagine a gathering in which the surroundings were part of the occasion. Look, too, at furniture on a more intimate scale. The three-person seat called an indiscret arranges its occupants in a particular relationship, turning conversation into something a designer could shape. Its form invites you to imagine where a person would sit and whom they would face. Across this floor’s medieval to nineteenth-century collections, keep asking what an object allowed people to do. Use, craftsmanship and social expectations meet in the same material surface.