Archives

France has a very well-organized system of public archives. These include the Archives Nationales, created in 1794, the departmental archives in which local collections were centralized by a decree of 1796, and the archives held in every commune. The rich collection of the Archives Nationales has since 1808 been housed in the Hôtel de Soubise in the Marais district of Paris, where it acquired a fine new building in the 1980s. Much literary archival material is also located in major libraries, particularly the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal.

[Peter France]