A Guide to Archives

Depending on the nature of your research, you might want to spend most of your time in one particular repository of archives in France. Even though there might be documents that interest you in all them, each archive has a particular geographic or temporal specialty.

You can find a more detailed breakdown of the content in each archive in their respective websites. Although these are often times incomplete, outdated or both. For the largest database on French archives, you can go to https://francearchives.gouv.fr/.

This guide offers you a broad overview of each archive to help you start your research so you can get an idea of how to plan your research trip. We want to streamline your research by directing to online inventories and research tools available for each collection. Click on any location on the map to go to an overview of the archival fund with its specialties and online inventories.