| West of the Musée Carnavalet, three other Marais mansions also house museums. In a parallel street, rue Elzévir, one block west of rue Payenne, the Musée Cognacq-Jay (daily except Mon 10am–5.40pm; free; M° St-Paul & M° Chemin-Vert) occupies the fine Hôtel Donon at no. 8. The Cognacq-Jay family built up the Samaritaine department store – you can see a history of the family and their charitable works in a series of dioramas on the tenth-floor terrace of the store. As well as being noted philanthropists, they were lovers of European art. Their collection of eighteenth-century pieces on show includes works by Canaletto, Fragonard, Rubens and Rembrandt, as well as an exquisite still life by Chardin, displayed in beautifully carved wood-panelled rooms filled with Sèvres porcelain and Louis XV furniture. The remaining two museums are decidedly quirky in nature, unlikely to divert you unless you happen to have an interest in security or taxidermy. Locks rule the day in the Musée de la Serrure-Bricard (Mon–Fri 2–5pm; closed Aug; €4.57; M° Chemin-Vert & M° St Paul) in the cellars of the Hôtel Libéral-Bruand at 1 rue de la Perle. The collection includes the fittings for Napoléon III's palace doors (the one for the Tuileries bashed in by revolutionaries), locks that trapped your hand or shot your head off if you tried a false key, and a seventeenth-century wonder made by a craftsman kept under lock and key for four years. The rest of the exhibits are pretty boring, though the hôtel setting is some compensation. Rue de la Perle's continuation, across rue Vieille du Temple, is rue des Quatre Fils. On its corner, at 60 rue des Archives, is the equally specialized Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Tues–Sun 11am–6pm; €4.60; M° Rambuteau), housed in the beautiful Hôtel Guénégaud. Devoted mainly to hunting, the museum's collections include a formidable array of stuffed animals and trophies of the hunt. Weapons range from prehistoric stone arrow-heads to highly decorative crossbows and guns, and there are many paintings by French artists romanticizing the chase.
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