The Museum of letters and manuscripts – it would seem an odd place in the Internet age. However in this age it created: private Parisian Museum, opened by French businessman Gerard Leriche, began work in 2004. It occupies three floors of a specially reconstructed mansion on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. (The mansion was reconstructed to create the necessary conditions for the storage of old documents: they need special lighting, and temperature.) Three floors, 600 square meters, and it's the same everywhere – just the window with pieces of paper! But people go and pay money. Why?

The question is, what kind of paper. Many of them changed the course of history. Glass showcases are really precious documents: handwritten work of Newton and Einstein (the calculation theory of relativity), drawn by Edison's light bulb, the Montgolfier balloon. Telegram from the captain of the Titanic, sent immediately after the accident: "All passengers are safe." A telegram signed by Eisenhower: "the Mission of the allied forces made in 02.41 local time on may 7, 1945". Among the documents during the Second world war (letters and secret messages of Charles de Gaulle, Churchill, and numerous official papers and personal letters from Auschwitz.

Personal letters in the Museum lot – Rubens, Monet, van Gogh, Rodin, Jack London, Mark TWAIN, Moliere, Racine, cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Charles VI, Richelieu, Catherine de Medici, Marie Antoinette. Different handwriting, different signatures, yellowed paper... you Can argue about how did Edith Piaf to her amorous correspondence with Marcel Cerdan flaunted in a literal sense, but in the Museum there was such exposure.

Here are the scores of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, manuscripts Chateaubriand, Maupassant, Balzac, Hugo is seen as great works were born, how they worked on a word, that was work. No button to press Backspace, and crossed out, written, to write with the pen on top, again to cross out.

The Museum's collection of approximately 70,000 letters, manuscripts, autographs, drawings, old books. Much is stored in the vaults, but regularly houses temporary exhibitions. The Museum never ceases to replenish the collection – for example, in 2011, he bought the notebook Napoleon with exercises in English. The Emperor studied the language of enemies, while in exile on the island of St. Helena. "How are they doing? "he wrote in English in a notebook, and drew near the fortress and plans of battles. Here the movie is not necessary, in these "just pieces of paper" is a lifetime.