The Musée du Fumeur, a guided tour

A museum opened in the heart of Paris in 2001, in the 11th arrondissement, and it will hold something for every kind of visitor, smoker, curious passer-by or aficionado: the Musée du Fumeur, the Smokers’ Museum. This unusual place traces the history of tobacco in all its forms across the world and also introduces visitors to vaping. Visitors can indeed sample a wide choice of e-liquids and see the differences between electronic cigarette models.

Inside the smokers’ museum

Admission is free, since the museum is run entirely by a non-profit association. On display is a permanent collection of antiques and engravings, along with temporary exhibitions.
The museum sets out the history of the earliest sacred smoke, the moment when the effects of these inhalations were discovered, and the way that history has developed up to the present day, when, paradoxically, smoking is no longer sacred and is regarded as dangerous, while, curiously, new smoking accessories are more and more in fashion.

The smokers’ museum is divided into several rooms

The museum interweaves the everyday tools of the smoker with dried plants, including full-size tobacco leaves, gathered from different regions and different eras. The gallery hosts selling exhibitions of paintings on tobacco leaves, from Dutch smoking houses to hookahs of the East, from Mayan cigars to peace pipes, by way of caricatures and photographs. The library and bookshop bring together remarkable works in several languages, from magazines and illustrated books to novels and even collector DVDs and videos. Portraits by artists and photographers attest to the shifting image of the act of smoking, somewhere between angelic and satanic. The museum shop, open to all, offers a range of quality smoking accessories, including e-liquid refills and vaporisers for users of electronic cigarettes, water pipes or hookahs. You will also find unusual gifts and souvenirs, from the most classic, such as cigar humidors, to the most extravagant pipes.

A worthwhile initiative from this association, and a way of understanding how attitudes have varied towards a practice found the world over.