The Musée de la Vie Romantique (Museum of Romantic Life) stands at the foot of Montmartre hill in the IXe arrondissement at 16 rue Chaptal, Paris, France in an 1830 hôtel particulier facing two twin-studios, a winter-garden and a courtyard. The museum is open daily except Monday; an admission fee is charged for temporary exhibitions. The nearest métro stations are Pigalle, Blanche, and Saint-Georges.
The museum building was once the Paris base of the painter Ary Scheffer (1795-1858) and was also used by Ary Renan, his grand nephew. For decades Scheffer and his daughter hosted Friday-evening salons, among the most famous in La Nouvelle Athènes. George Sand (1804-1876) used to come as a neighbour with Frédéric Chopin, meeting Eugène Delacroix, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Alphonse de Lamartine, and Pauline Viardot. Later in the century, Charles Dickens, Ivan Turgueniev, and Charles Gounod attended regularly.
Today the museum displays numerous mementos of George Sand, including portraits, household possessions, jewelry with famous plaster casts of Sand's sensuous arm and Chopin's elegant right hand. It also has material linked to Ary Renan's father, the scholar Ernest Renan. It is now one of the City of Paris's three literary museums, along with the Maison de Balzac and the Maison de Victor Hugo. Of particular interest are some 170 documents related to Sand's life.