The Living History Museum welcomes and invites you to take a dive into the heart of French History between 1800 and 1950. Browse the 38,000-square-foot full-scale exhibition where 103 life-size scenes take you back to the daily lives of our ancestors. Admire a unique collection of more than 70,000 objects, tools and vehicles for a stimulating, immersive journey, share our passion for the past and join us to celebrate our roots.
In 2024, the museum added two miniature scenes: Provencal Nativity with santons and the little electric train of our childhood.
A fascinating place where History comes to life to amaze both children and adults.
The living history Museum
The birth
One day, Vivianne de Witt was asked by her grandson, Arnaud de Turckheim: “Amie, tell me about your life as a child in the Seine-et-Marne countryside.” For one hour, she told him about how people used to live, since she was born in 1947. “But you come from Mars”, he said, and went on insistently, “Amie, you must make a museum, because after you, the people who will talk about History will only do so from what they will have read in books.” This is how, fifteen years later, the Living History Museum was born. It can be defined by this sentence :
Because yesterday is a treasure
Publication
105-scene tour
Find out about the Museum’s itinerary, as well as a condensed description of each of its 103 life-size scenes and two miniature scenes : Provencal Nativity with santons and the little electric train of our childhood.
GalLerY
Scene n°01
STABLE AND BARN
Scene n°02
THE LIVING ROOM
Scene n°09
THE TREADMILL
Scene n°19
QUARRYMAN AND STONEMASON
and extra tailors
Scene n°26
THE POST OFFICE
and peddler extra
Scene n°30
THE CHEESE GROCERY
Scene n°31
SHEPHERDS AND SUMMER PASTURES
and extras, the spinner and her son
Scene n°31
SHEPHERDS AND SUMMER PASTURES
Scene n°32
GARDENER
Scene n°42
CONSCRIPTION AND WARS
Scene n°49
THE PRINTING PRESS
Scene n°54
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER
MANUFACTURER
Scene n°74
A SALA CORSA, THE CORSICAN ROOM
Scene n°75
FIREFIGHTERS
Scene n°90
MOTORCYCLE DEALER
Scene n°90
MOTORCYCLE DEALER
and the 1919 D.F.R. 250 CV and its side-car
Scene n°91
GARAGE
and the famous 1898 "vis-à-vis" of Dion-Bouton
Scene n°95
FAIRGROUND ARTS
Scene n°98
A WALK IN THE PARK
and the coconut merchant extra
The history of the Museum
Viviane de Witt, or the confessions of a patron, by Anna Aznaour
The Founder
Viviane de Witt
She was the first woman to become a Paris auctioneer and is one of the great collectors of French Popular Art objects.
According to ancient Greeks, there is no such thing as chance – character decides fate.
If these affirmations are correct, the Living History Museum was born in 1960, and not in 2018. The precise location of this event would then be the Galliera Palace in Paris, and not a former disco in Les Ormes-sur-Voulzie. On a rainy autumn day, 13-year-old Viviane discovers the world of auctions with her illustrious father, Raymond Jutheau, owner of the Jutheau insurance company.
Amazed by the extremely rare 17th and 18th century French silverware lots, the teenager is, above all, caught up in the feverish swirl of auction biddings that would reveal her vocation.
A vocation she announces to her father on the very same night, “When I am older, I will be an auctioneer”. He answered, “But honey, you can’t, you’re a woman!” This absurd censorship, fed at the time by male chauvinist traditions, would later reveal her untameable character.
When she was 30, she became one of the first three female auctioneers in France, a career that led her to cross path with the man who would become her third husband, Jérôme de Witt, a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte.
How did you get the idea of the Museum?
Time has playfully woven a favourable sequence of circumstances in my life, which ultimately led to this point. The whole thing actually started early in my childhood, during holidays I spent in Ormes-sur-Voulzie, in a little castle owned by my beloved great-aunt and godmother. Everything here is a reminder of a way of life that doesn’t exist anymore, of habits and customs I once told my grandson about. In amazement, he said, “You should tell all this in a museum!” It was the starting point of this fascinating, yet time-consuming, work.
How long did it take you to achieve it?
For more than fifteen years, my husband and I spent much of our time searching for these collections all over France. The numerous picks were facilitated by the knowledge I acquired when I was an auctioneer, and during 20 years of experience.
I then had to find a common thread, to imagine a concept: the daily life of the French between 1800 and 1950. We presented it through 103 life-size scenes of our ancestors’ daily lives, trades and skills. We recreated full-scale scenes, using more than 70,000 period tools, objects and vehicles.
How did you achieve it?
To create the staging of the Museum, I turned for advice to Madame Martine Segalen, the former co-president of the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires, ethnologist and researcher for the CNRS. She generously put me in touch with her PhD students to help with the questions that puzzled me. The goal was to be accurate when recreating the scenes. On her advice, the aristocracy and upper classes were excluded, they constituted only 5% of the population and were not representative of the life of French people at the time.
Emphasis was deliberately placed on everyday rooms that were often patched up, because at the time, people were too poor and could not afford to replace things.
The founders
At the roots of the Living History Museum
The founders
Count Jérôme de Witt
A descendant of King Jérôme de Wetsphalie, one of Napoleon’s brothers, and of King Leopold II through his daughter Clémentine, Jérôme de Witt’s grandmother, he inherited a certain taste for mechanics and aesthetics from his ancestors. This inspired him to found the Dewitt fine -watchmaking manufacture in Geneva.
Jérôme de Witt ensured the building and infrastructures of the Living History Museum with a small team he gathered about him.
In sharing its staging with his wife Viviane, he drew from his creative spirit, paired with his builder’s soul.
He is also an old car enthusiast.
Countess Vivane de Witt
Born Viviane Jutheau, she graduated law school, and married Count Jérôme de Witt. She became the first female auctioneer in Drouot Paris from 1976 to 1995, and at the Crédit Municipal in Paris from 1989 to 1995.
She is the co-founder of the Salon de Mars, an art salon, in Geneva.
From 2003 to 2009, she was president of the Geneva fair.
From 2003 to 2009, she was vice-president of Palexpo.
From 2000 to 2010, she was city councillor in Vandoeuvres, Switzerland.
Since 2007, she has been president of Radio Cité Genève, 92.2 FM, the cultural radio broadcast of Geneva.
Since 2012, she has been the CEO of De Witt Fine Watchmaking.
Since 2024, she has been a member of the
ALIPH foundation, the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas.
Art books author
Tabatières chinoises, Denoël, 1980
Leleu le décorateur des années 30 et 50, éditions Vecteurs, 1989.
Sterlé Joailler, éditions Vecteurs, 1990.
Marina B, éditions Skira, 2004.
Le livre du Musée de la Vie d’autrefois, 2018.
Decorations
Knight of the Legion of Honor
Knight of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres.
Brotherhoods
L’Académie du Cep, Genève.
L’Ordre de la Channe Valaisanne.
La Confrérie du Brie de Meaux.
The Eiffel Tower
by Jean-Paul Caudoux
This realistically recreated Eiffel Tower was built by Jean-Paul Caudoux, a remarkable personality who lives in the Pyrenées Atlantiques. He started his life as a locksmith in the Provinces.
With the help of his wife Jacqueline, he started a small 11,000-square-foot museum in the Parisian Region. He then created a second and large living history museum in Ayen, Corrèze, The Museum of Trades, Skills and Folklore, that used to attract up to 20,000 visitors a year. The acquisition of this museum represents about 1/5 of the collection of the Living History Museum in Ormes-sur-Voulzie.
Jacqueline and Jean-Paul Caudoux generously played an important part in staging some of the museum. Jean-Paul Caudoux considers this Eiffel Tower his masterpiece. He built it in 1989 for the Parisian monument’s 100th anniversary and as an homage to “the big sister.”
It was moved from Corrèze in three parts in a special convoy, so it had to be reassembled and painted the same color as the real one: bronze.
Interestingly, the original Eiffel Tower was brown/red in 1889 and yellow ocre in 1899.
Jean-Paul Caudoux
Scene n°36 – The blacksmith
Once a year during a weekend in September, Jean-Paul Caudoux, who conceived and built the Eiffel Tower that stands in the garden of the restaurant Chez Grand’Mère, brings the Museum’s forge back to life.