Archives de Paris

The Archives de Paris in the 19th arrondissement house the city's municipal archive and are located at the Porte des Lilas. The building, which was renovated in 1978, previously served as the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan before the collection was moved here in the late 1990s. Its holdings include historical civil registry records, census data, military service files, and 19th-century cadastral maps. Particularly valuable are the photographic collections dating from between 1860 and 1940, as well as documents on the restitution of looted property after World War II. Because many records from before 1860 were lost in the fires of the Paris Commune in 1871, today's collection is an important witness to the city's history and serves as a resource for research on the capital's demographic and administrative development.