Yes, of course! Not only is the visit free, not only do you have splendid views over the beautiful Place des Vosges from Hugo’s windows, not only do you see how the Hugos lived for sixteen years between the 1830 and 1848 revolutions —you follow Hugo’s life chronologically through the rooms and find samples of his graphic art and interior design, along with portraits of his family.
A few highlights and some of my favorite spots:
Victor and Adèle Hugo lived at this address with their four children (Léopoldine, Charles, François-Victor, and Adèle) from 1832 until 1848. After revolutionaries came into the apartment when family was away, they decided to move —even though the fighters had left, having done no damage, when they realized they were in Victor Hugo’s home.
Artists regularly gathered on Sunday evenings in the red lounge for conversation and socializing, people such as Liszt, George Sand, Gautier, Lamartine, Ingres, and Balzac. Hugo was the undisputed leader of French Romanticism in the 1830s. Charles Dickens even visited!
In the next room you come to, you will find transported from the Channel Island of Guernsey the Chinese room that Victor Hugo decorated for his mistress, Juliette Drouet, when they lived there in exile. Hugo imagined the interior design of all the public rooms in his exile home, Hauteville House in St. Peter Port, which is now a national museum.
The small room you next come to offers imaginative small exhibitions (still free) of various work by and associated with Hugo—for instance, one of my favorite “pocket” exhibits focused on Hugo’s various drafts of Les Misérables and how they all came together.
I also love the table inlaid with inkwells used by Hugo, Dumas, Sand, and Lamartine. Assembled by Hugo, with letters from each author about their inkwells, this table was destined for a charity auction for poor children in Guernsey.
Finally, in the last room, you see recreated one of the rooms in which Hugo lived his last years, at 130 Avenue d’Eylau. In this room you find the famous raised desk at which Hugo wrote standing up and the bed in which he died on 22 May 1885.
Location and Hours:
The address is 6 place des Vosges, in the southwest corner of the square, down the arcades from the Café Victor Hugo and diagonally opposite the Café Ma Bourgogne (both good places to eat or drink). Located in the neighborhood known as the Marais, the place des Vosges (known as the place Royale when the Hugo’s moved there) is in the center of Paris.
Closest metro stations: Bastille and St. Paul, on line 1. Also nearby is the Chemin vert stop on line 8.
Open Tuesday-Sunday, 10:00 am until 6:00 pm (closed on Monday, as are many Paris museums). Visiting the second floor apartments is free. Audioguides are available for a fee. Intriguing special third-floor exhibits cost a few euros.
For a quick English introduction to a visit of the Hugos’ apartment:
http://www.maisonsvictorhugo.paris.fr/en/museum-collections/place-des-vosges-apartment-visit