Musée Jean de La Fontaine

The Musée Jean de La Fontaine is a writer's house museum in Château-Thierry, Aisne, France, installed in the birthplace of the French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine. Founded in 1876, it holds the French state designation Musée de France and the label Maisons des Illustres. The museum preserves and displays collections devoted to La Fontaine's life and work, housed within a sixteenth-century townhouse that retains significant Renaissance architectural elements.

The museum originated from efforts by the Société historique et archéologique de Château-Thierry, led by Alphonse Barbey, who in 1869 secured an agreement to purchase La Fontaine's birthplace to prevent its deterioration and establish a museum and public library there. A public subscription under the society's patronage was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The purchase sum of 16,000 francs was finally raised in 1876, and the municipality acquired the house that year. The collector Jules Maciet provided the first core of artworks through donations in 1876, 1877, and 1878, initially displayed in the ground-floor panelled salon. In 1893, when Château-Thierry's new town hall opened, the principal pieces were transferred there for decoration and the museum effectively dissolved. It was reinstalled in 1898 on the first floor of the house. Beginning in 2008, the city undertook restoration of the façades of the building, which is classified as a monument historique, with support from the French state and the Conseil général de l'Aisne. Between 2022 and 2026 the museum underwent further restoration, reopening in 2026.

The museum's collections reflect the international renown of Jean de La Fontaine. They encompass editions of his works from the seventeenth century to the present, alongside art objects decorated with fable motifs. The holdings include illustrations by François Chauveau, the first illustrator to work under La Fontaine's own supervision, and engravings by Laurent Cars after Jean-Baptiste Oudry. The collections extend to modern interpretations, including work by Salvador Dalí. The museum has continually enriched its holdings through private donations, state deposits, and an active acquisition policy.

The museum occupies a Renaissance townhouse dating from 1559, as indicated by a date once carved on a pilaster to the right of the door. The façade is articulated by four pilasters and retains original decorative elements: a band of fleurs-de-lis above the door, three orders of small sculpted capitals, high flat cornices, and above the first-floor cornice, interlaced crescents, the cipher of Diane de Poitiers, whose presence on this façade remains unexplained. The courtyard features a stone and brick double-return perron with its original railing and an old well. During La Fontaine's time, the courtyard opened onto the street through a monumental carriage gateway flanked by two pilasters and crowned with a pediment; this portal was later removed to widen the street and replaced by the present grille. The interior preserves a stone staircase with barrel vaulting, superb exposed-beam ceilings, and some original parquet and terracotta tile flooring that La Fontaine himself would have known. A turret, according to tradition, led to La Fontaine's study on the first floor of the wing overlooking the street. The sale contract of 1676 describes the property as including a tiled house with wings, a turret staircase, dovecote, bakehouse, and enclosed garden. The building is classified as a monument historique.