Museum of art and history of Judaism is located in the Marais district, which has long been settled Parisian Jews, in the old mansion of Saint-Aignan.

The building of the seventeenth century received the name from its second owner, the Duke de Saint-Aignan. In the XX century, the mansion was purchased by the city and restored. The idea to post here a Museum of art and history of Judaism is strongly supported by the then mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac. He opened the Museum in 1998, this time as President of France.

The original exhibition was created from the collection of a private Museum of Jewish art and collections Strauss-Rothschild Museum of Cluny. Add also items obtained from American Jewish organizations on restitution – she was found looted by the Nazis of Jewish cultural values around the world. The collection is enriched by the collections of the Louvre, Centre Pompidou, Orsay museums and the Carnival, the Prague Jewish Museum. The whole family archive – more than three thousand documents – gave grandson of captain Dreyfus, convicted in 1894 of spying for Germany and then acquitted. "Dreyfus affair" has split the society and had a profound impact on the history of France and Europe at the turn of the century.

The first thing the visitor sees, going to the Museum is a monument to Alfred Dreyfus by the sculptor Louis Mittelberg. The captain is stretched out like a string, holding in his raised hand the hilt (during a public demotion Dreyfus personal weapons officer broke about the knee).

The stands of the Museum you can see the bronze Hanukkah lamp of the fourteenth century, stone bowl for Purim the year 1319, a tombstone in the Jewish cemetery of Paris 1281. There are many Torah scrolls, unique jewelry, household items of various Jewish communities across Europe. Rich in scenic collection of the Museum. The main place is given to the painting of Marc Chagall "the Gate of the Jewish cemetery," written in Vitebsk in 1917 (it is believed that the artist has depicted Old gate-Ulanowicz cemetery, where are buried his parents). Widely presents the works of Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Nathan Altman. In the section of sculpture – the work of Ossip Zadkine, Jacques Lipchitz, Hanna Orlova.

The exposition tells in detail about the history of the Jewish communities of France, of Europe, of North Africa from the middle ages to the present day. The Museum's collection is one of the world's largest collections of Jewish cultural property.

Skirting the mansion, the visitor enters the garden of Anne Frank. Here grows a young chestnut tree Anne – Jewish girl who died in Auschwitz. He's grown from the stump of a tree, the branches of which the girl watched from his hiding place while her and her family was seized by the Gestapo.