Archives de Paris

In changing political institutions and administrative districts, the French Revolution was concerned with the preservation of its archives and those of the abolished institutions. Sorting officers were charged with sorting out useful state documents, preserving historical archives and destroying all monarchical and feudal vestiges. They often confused the function of Paris, the capital of France, with that of chief town of the Seine department, by directing to the National Archives (created in 1790) documents that would naturally have belonged in the Archives of the Seine, created by the law of 5 Brumaire An V (26 October 1796). From 1803, the Archives de la Seine were housed in the Hôtel de Ville, then in 1860, in an annex on Avenue Victoria. The fires that ravaged Paris at the end of the Commune in May 1871 had disastrous consequences for the Parisian archives: in addition to parish records, civil status registers, documents resulting from the activities of Parisian guilds, religious communities, and parish factories, as well as the documents that existed in the courthouse, which was also burned down, were all reduced to ashes. From 1878 onwards, the archives of the Seine moved to Quai Henri IV. Following the law of 10 July 1964 on the reorganisation of the Paris region, the Seine department was abolished. There followed a new distribution (devolution) of the archives from the former prefecture of the Seine to the newly created Archives départementales de la petite couronne. In order to be able to continue the statutory collection of the archives of the administrations located on the territory of Paris, several annexes to the one on the Quai Henri IV coexisted in the Paris region. A first annex was inaugurated in Villemoisson-sur-Orge in 1985 and the current Archives de Paris building, designed by the architects Henri and Bruno Gaudin, located at the Porte des Lilas, was inaugurated in 1990. A second annex in Seine-Saint-Denis, opened in 2018, further increases storage capacity. Until 1975, the status of Paris was largely inspired by the law of 28 Pluviôse Year VIII (17 February 1800), which established a prefect for administration and a prefect for the police. It is only since 1975 that the prefect no longer has any municipal functions. Because of this dual status (city and department), the Archives of the Seine and then of Paris are both municipal and departmental archives, which can be considered the leading French territorial archive service: they conserve nearly 76 linear kilometres of documents, welcome more than 7,000 researchers in 15,000 working sessions and communicate approximately 45,000 documents each year. 

Only small and medium-sized unbound documents (A3 maximum) in good condition can be reproduced directly by readers on the photocopier in the reading room. After consulting the original documents, readers can order prints of plans and reproductions of bound documents in paper or digital format from the reprography workshop. The documents to be reproduced must be precisely identified and indicated in the original box/register, in consultation with the scientific staff present. The minimum time required to obtain the reproduced document is 20 working days. 

The Archives de Paris hold almost all unpublished, often handwritten documents. Most of them come from the administrations of the Seine, then of Paris, and, to a lesser extent, from private individuals or legal entities. In addition to the archival sources, a specialised library is also available to researchers. It consists of 37,000 volumes and a thousand serial publications. In order to identify the references (call numbers) likely to document a search, one must first consult the finding aids: inventories, archive directories and files. They can be consulted in the reading room. 

The Archives de Paris are open to all (except children under 12). Registration is free of charge, on presentation of an identity document with a photograph. A personal reader's card will be issued for the calendar year. It gives access to the reading room and is necessary to order documents. It must be presented at the reception desk at each working session. Bags, satchels and outdoor clothing must be deposited in the cloakroom before entering the reading room. Only the tools necessary for taking notes (pencil, paper, laptop, camera without flash) are allowed in the reading room. Mobile phones must be set to silent mode and only used for photography without flash. Smoking and the consumption of food and drink are not permitted. The documents provided are often unique and fragile: readers are asked to be particularly careful when handling them, to help safeguard a heritage to be passed on to future generations. The archives can only be consulted in the reading room, and no loans are allowed outside, including microfilms.